


A Rock in the River

by PipesFlowForeverandEver



Series: Hymns of Struggle [13]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Mild Coarse Language, Mystery, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, This fic is based mostly or only on chapter 1-3 game canon and is an AU, This is the finale arc of the series, a modern oc has entered the studio and tries to empathize with its residents, and no one is entirely sure how to react, gay relationships, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2019-08-04 02:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 50,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16337969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PipesFlowForeverandEver/pseuds/PipesFlowForeverandEver
Summary: I've always asked what there was to live for after I died. My answer was to exist, to try to reach the unfathomable glory of the god whose dark, dripping smile loomed over us. Every waking moment in a life with no rest was filled with prayer- a prayer for something to make me human again.And then you gave her to me.You gave her tous.And I don't think we could let her go if we tried.-An empathetic attempt to comprehend and console Sammy Lawrence and other residents of the studio.(This is the last arc in the main series. The entire main series is complete with 88 chapters and 5 canon drabbles.)





	1. A Wayward Soul

**Author's Note:**

> I also have this fic posted on fanfiction.net. If you're worried about the authenticity of this posting, feel free to contact my fanfiction.net account of the same name and I'll verify for you that this work is not stolen.
> 
> This fanfic references violence and its aftermath as well as depictions of hallucinations and re-experiencing trauma. I do want to assure, however, that this fic attempts to realistically bring together two beings with deep emotional troubles in a way that does not romanticize abuse, but still acknowledges wrongdoings and the trauma of others' actions.
> 
> This fic is an AU titled "Hymns of Struggle" that is based mostly or only on information based in Chapter 1-3 canon, my own idea of how the story possibly could have turned out as seen through the eyes of my OC.
> 
> This is the eight and final arc. It will focus on it means to protect what you love. There are many secrets for the previous seven arcs that I've held very close to my chest, and I'm extremely excited to share it with you. I think the depth of this story is very altered with their reveal and new sorts of themes emerge (not to toot my own horn lol, I've just been thinking about this a long time and realized how much everything ties back to what I will be sharing here).
> 
> I mostly write this for both your enjoyment and mine, but comments still brighten my day if you have any thoughts.
> 
> Shoutout once again to AceofIntuition for helping me come up with the arc name! Everything is different now, so it's only fitting to reduce the grandeur of previous titles into something more...pure to what this story is about. Simple, powerful, magical, and _changed._
> 
> This is it, huh? Goodness I'm so excited. Thank you. All of you. For reading this far and for supporting my story. I love you for it and it wouldn't be the same without you.
> 
>  **NOTE:** I'm just gonna keep an updated list at the end of this work and all the others of all the spectacular fanart you wonderful people keep making me that I'll never stop screaming about. I'll still be posting links in the notes of chapters as new art is made, but it makes sense to keep a big list somewhere!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me.”_ – Job 3:25

This chapter of Sammy’s life as of late began like any other, with him calling out either the name of his newfound friend or that of their eternal inky god.

But it had never been that they had been uttered together.

 _Never_ had it been quite like this.

_“INK DEMON!!!”_

He couldn’t feel his chest. Where did he take her?! What…what was to happen to her?

He had heard, he admitted, time after time of people of sinful flesh that fell into the talons of his lord. He never saw what occurred-

But he could only assume blood was shed.

That’s why, of course, it was so amazing- even prophetic- of the demon to leave her not only spared but healed when Sammy offered her as a sacrifice what now felt so long ago- for his hymns to be heard, her wonder to live on to grace him. The same ruthless deity that killed and took souls to the puddles had then become the one that watched over her tender spirit, even gifting her his blessings of an old, comforting life.

 _That_ was the same god as he who took her away.

Sammy could not deny that this was he known to take time and time and time again. To his horror, in a split second suddenly the demon’s continual saviorhood of her- bestowing Francine to the prophet’s care…-

Perhaps did not make her special after all.

His lord unfathomably had come to remind something Sammy had forgotten in the lull of disciplehood:

**He was the demon, and she was still his sheep.**

No parable they learned, no shake of their faith had ever changed the truths this world held long before Francine communed with Sammy and the studio. She may have turned upside down over, and over, and over again- until the chaos simply felt like tides pulling over the soul and their back and forth between peace and distress became akin to a dance- but Sammy began to fear that maybe, just maybe, that touching the fingertips of mortality would not keep it from dying in his arms.

Just as he did when Henry was in his fold, Sammy suddenly felt the world fall apart around him- as if the walls of the studio where barely keeping its streams of chaos and death in at its fragile seams.

_“FRANCINE!!!”_

The ink man cried blindly into the corridors of the studio, a hand clinging to the wall. But it was not literal blindness that marked him, no; the mask’s broken strap was retied around the back of his head, a cartoon face in front of his own showing no harm besides merely a bit more of a scrape across one of the pie-cut eyes.

No, this lack of sight was because as he began to creep to the edge of knowing something, he now couldn’t see any of it at all.

It made his heart pound, his lungs heave, and his lips tremble. All so dissonant, all so unbelievable what she had done and said those seconds before being ripped from his arms-

…That he just simply couldn’t think about it.

And that’s where we find him now, his best friend vacant from his existence- his life abruptly not unlike how it had been for decades before, and yet its return no longer a biding for release but now a desperate chase for it. The pipes quivering all around him like they had a racing pulse, too. One foot in front of the other, his own shadow chasing him, he was helpless but to drag himself to the alter of his lord and beg him for mercy. His stress stained the floor, his own body melting maybe like never before. The man couldn’t ignore this was oh so familiar to how his sacrifice failed carried herself in her first steps into the domain of ink and black magic- helpless, weak, and so very, very unsure of what was yet to come after something so horrifically glorious as their demon’s grace.

But as much as he put forth effort only into the prayers in his mind and the beckoning upon his tongue, the thoughts of the heart knew that nothing would ever be the same.


	2. Upon Death's Door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“‘See, O LORD, for I am in distress; My spirit is greatly troubled; My heart is overturned within me, For I have been very rebellious. In the street the sword slays; In the house it is like death.’”_ – Lamentations 1:20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My friend Silver made me some AMAZING art of Dances of Duality! Please take a look and freak out with me!!!!
> 
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/179231425713/slipnslideblog-it-was-like-magic-itself  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/179232343163/slipnslideblog-the-lord-is-my-shepherd-this

The hum of death is a beautiful, awful thing, and no place knew it better than Joey Drew Studios. The way it vibrated was like a siren call to the river Styx, its quivering the rigor mortis of a soul much bigger than a single person was meant to contain…-

But of course, it was not one person who died but very, very many.

Sammy tried not to remember this as he prayed to his god that one would remain alive.

_Drip._

_Drip._

_Drip._

No matter how far away, each drop of the broken pipes felt like it was falling right onto the man’s liquid spine. It was as if being of the same body and blood, he could feel the spirits of the puddles crawling inside him with each passing second, with every hollow, quiet crash of ink.

Like he was in the puddles all over again.

_Drip._

God…

Lord…

Please don’t let her be there.

_Drip._

Please don’t let her be there.

Not the puddles.

_Drip._

His god had finally taken her, and there were only two choices he could see:

That she would ascend to something greater. What was greater…being uncertain. He could only determine it to be unfathomable.

The other choice, the other weight on Francine’s scale?

That their time hand in hand was a parable to be lived through- merely a lesson for the straying prophet to take to heart- that the mortality he craved was good indeed, and it was something he was to receive after this.

Very.

Sacrifice.

Indeed, it was possible that her mark as a lamb to the slaughter was not removed with his lord’s lingering over her dying body…

…But rather remained to prophesy the beginning of her end.

Sammy felt so sick knowing that he had considered this before, in the times of quiet with her eyes closed and her body at rest. He’d look upon her and in the back of his mind would think:

_“He may come. Any second, he may come. And from this hell we will both be set free.”_

But as they not only passed but cherished time together, Sammy slowly began to see a salvation…with her. Within a world of true, natural light touching his skin and kissing her face until it glinted not like the black which he was carved of but rather with something so familiar yet so far away that he being trapped outside of reality could only feel that what _was_ real was in truth totally, utterly magical.

Her world was _real._

And so was she.

And as the light of her candle soul flickered out of his sight more and more with each panicked step, Sammy felt the stab of wondering if he’d ever want to be set free without her…

His faith had led him to want sacrifice, but faith in _her_ made him fear its completion.

_Drip._

With every smile, every frown, every glint in her eye that only someone so human could contain, the doubts of her healing were pushed back while they were in each other’s company, and he began to trust that maybe someone like her could belong here- with him- after all.

But of course, they weren’t above ground yet, and so the drop that came upon him with revelation of impossible expectations hit so, so hard.

_Drip._

He could feel the hollow sockets in his skull trembling. He had never seen anyone die himself- not someone of flesh- but he could still _see it._

…See it happen to _her._

And long habituated to the sounds of maiming- screaming, howling, and ripping- Sammy suddenly had reason to match them to possibilities. Stolen life could now have a face, and it was the same spotted one that looked at him every time he was unsure what to do.

He heard her scream over and over and over. That same scream as when he saw her last.

And if their god loved her, the prophet was growing less and less certain what that love really meant.

_Drip._

Whatever he did to her.

If she ended up there- in the puddles-…

…Sammy started to imagine himself going after her.

Would he die again at the hands of his master simply to chase for a woman special no more?

The more his own body melted underneath him, the raspier his breath- the more sure he became. If their god took her away, even as a lesson, he’d go back to the place he hated most. She couldn’t be alone.

He could never let her be alone again.

Sin.

Sin.

_Sin._

Each turn he made was wrong. He wanted to trust his god, and he strived to achieve what he believed the dark lord wanted. He was punished, in turn, for not one attempted shedding of blood but two. And so he strove to prove himself to the ink demon by becoming the steward of whom he had spared. Tempted by all she had shown him of both her and himself, he chased after who has was, and now the woman was gone too. It should have been no surprise that a man so profoundly aware of every last molecule of himself to be damned that he wanted to abide by his horrific flesh and join his friend in the hell to which he belonged.

Perhaps this was retribution for seeking out the angel- the keeper of the knowledge of evil and she who blasphemed against the way of the demon the most- to ask her who he was before the ink-…

…

Everything stilled.

Air left his frozen lungs, and all he heard was his own body and blood- both from his own form and the pieces of himself in the black coated glass- falling to the wood.

_Drip…_

_Drip…_

_…Sin._

Sometimes the sinners need saints worse than they, and so with the discomfort of religious doubts and a life’s upheaval wrapping around him like a ribbon of wind, the preacher with no flock ran to heaven’s devil without daring to speak another word to the walls.

 

* * *

                                                                                                           

How can someone made of emptiness feel even colder than before?

Sammy asked himself this as he trudged towards the seraph’s lair, one burdened step at a time as the oil of his body seemed to attempt a retreat back to the well of souls with each second, every thought. A trail of black followed the shepherd, splatters shaken with even the slightest movement off of arms and legs so shaken from the inside out. He kept silent, he himself unsure if he was noiseless as not to be caught in the misdeed lest there be consequences, or if he was simply and purely ashamed of what he was about to do.

If he was returning to that which precipitated his friend’s taking, certainly the musician had reason to feel so about a return.

But what choice did he have?

None, and he knew it.

 _Her_ reaction, of course, required much more evaluation.

As she toyed with the near-corpse of a Piper strapped to a table, small electric bursts still twitching extremities, Alice kept her back turned as she heard Sammy enter, at first pretending to continue to busy herself with the experiments of becoming whole again. Although she knew deep down that such efforts had been for nothing for a damn long time.

She could recognize that sniveling without looking, and in her…curiosity of his coming, she allowed no barriers to hold him.

Shoulder blades shined as the colorless woman felt his stare and the shadow of the room slide across her profile with her readjusting posture. Alice didn’t know what to think of this- his disgusting slithering, his dropped jaw- and so it was not something she could ignore.

“What the hell do you-”

And as she turned to face him, that one eye of hers widened.

Indeed, the angel was witnessing a man melting before her very eyes- and not by her own hand. Her eyes sharpened as she scrutinized her enemy, lips parted. But to solidify her own sense of self, a look of upset at such an appearance soon was wiped away by a snarl.

“…What is it?”

And even after more than a lifetime of living in the same confines of twisted fate as he, Alice still never saw it coming.

As soon as two eyes painted and one sculpted met, Sammy threw himself at her. A hand threw back and a feminine voice cracked in two screamed at being touched not only by the substance but also the _person_ she hated most.

She was just about to kill him when she abruptly noticed what he was doing.

One grasp firmly, desperately on her forearm and the other quivering in palm, the hand poised to swiftly strike with divine retribution froze in the air as Alice saw Sammy fall to his knees and bow his head.

Sniveling was one thing, but never had she heard him… _cry._

“A-Alice!” Is there even a word to describe how he sounded as he finally spoke? A voice quiet like a whisper but so loud with dismay? “She’s- She…- _Francine!”_

Her fingers made a sudden jerk as he gripped hers even tighter, but they did not pull away.

“Francine…-“ he tried again, verbalizing the impossible, “My lord! Taken! Francine _\- taken!”_

Alice could barely see a gaping expression matching hers as that wretched mask finally turned up to face her. His own soma leaked from underneath the cover of that smile, a now flimsy shelter for his shameful, pitiful veracities of belief.

So much time together and yet it was only now Sammy found their common ground. It didn’t begin nor end with the stolen woman but she did, very, very much, encompass what Sammy and Alice both wished for most in a world where they could have nothing they wanted.

And so he had crawled to the deity at war to his own, accepting that even someone he spent so long despising maybe could love Francine and all she became to them, too. So yet again, Sammy made himself vulnerable with she who he dreaded to reveal to his softest spots to strike.

As he seized her so tight, the angel couldn’t discern if this oozing of tar was his alone or if she was melting along with him and his dripping hands, too.

“Angel-…my lord… _he-…”_ Teeth bared as the jagged hole of broken into another set’s cartoon row showed a mouth stretching with anguish and appall. What was said next could hardly be heard at all, both in its volume and in its awful truth.

_“He took Francine.”_

The last reverberations of his quivering voice fell apart with utterance of the unbelievable. The humming of the pipes was the silence now- a subtle, all-consuming aura that surrounded prophet and seraph, eating away every last scrap of comfort they had found in the presence of a woman now gone.

Sammy felt veins filled not with blood but something so much unholier rush up and down his neck, throbbing until it rattled his skull and began to blur the image of the angel ahead, but no amount of horror of his could spare him from seeing her own dawning comprehension.

Somehow, an empty socket and a filled one could match each other in expressing a hollowed spirit.

Two sides of a mouth so unalike now mirrored the same gaping terror.

An ink-gloved hand still raised midmotion slowly…slowly…curled until closed.

And the last thing he saw was an expression of shock turn into one of rage as a closed fist slammed into his jaw with every ounce of blame he had coming.


	3. Goliath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“From the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I…”_ \- Psalm 61:2

_“This is all your FAULT!!!”_

That’s what Alice Angel screamed as Sammy was knocked back by a punch dead into the side of his face. A yelp, a skid, and a splatter, and then Sammy was left with his legs outstretched, one arm dangling limp in front of a leaning torso and the other pointlessly coming up to feel where her knuckles hit- as if whether or not his body shed ink would even matter. As much as Sammy loathed himself- certainly more than any purely human body would allow- Alice’s response left him utterly perplexed…-

…And considering how strained and stressed their limited time was now, totally outraged.

“How could I have stopped the ink demon from ripping her out of my arms?!” Sammy demanded, balling his own fists not to hit back but to prepare himself for retaliation.

And it came. Just as he shouted back, this very same upset would bounce right back at him, her voice echoing not only down the hall but straight into his heart and head.

“That’s not what I meant, and you KNOW it, you _damn bastard!”_

With Sammy having stumbled backwards with her blow before, its deliverer had plenty of space to step down from the stage, literally stooping down to his level. Her approach- her still clutched fists by her sides- forced the man to take a step back, and then… then came something she had kept inside for a long, long time, even as many two voices in one still straining to accept what they carried off her tongue.

“YOU… _lulled_ her into trusting the demon- into trusting this… _hell!”_ the angel began to seethe, blame twisting her expression into a scowl. “When I first saw her- saw her coming to me on her own after knowing you decided she’s somehow yours… _I was so scared._ Back then, I was scared she was like Henry- that she would simply… _take from me, too,_ and that since you even encouraged her to know the ink demon, that maybe she would in some foolish hope take from me for his sake. But now I realize…there’s SO much more to be afraid of than that, and I still managed to pick the wrong reason to fear.”

As one voice strayed into the other back and forth- like rocking from one train of thought into another- one eye and one socket pinched together into something that resembled Susie more than Alice had allowed herself to show before…no less in front of the man that took not only a superficial shred of joy so many decades ago the angel could have used before crossing into their limbo…but also, she believed, he who permitted another woman to be taken from the little she had left, too.

“ _She had a safe place. She could have stayed._ God, she could have STAYED in your _PATHETIC_ hidey hole and never look back upon the rest of this wretched world that wished her DEAD! But she wanted to leave… _of course, she wanted to leave._ _We all do._ And you trusted the demon so much that you felt her safe to fly into the spider’s web all on her own…”

Of course, this web referred to Alice- the black widow of the studio’s dusty cobwebs- but finally as Sammy studied her face, watching her justified rant, something clawed inside him that this could be other dangers too. The searchers, the butchers, the…-

And with satisfaction, she set forth one final sentence to finish fabricating that worry into reality just for him to bask in, surrounding him with not only the truth but with the worst of it…that he _deserved_ to hear:

“…But you should have been terrified all along that the demon would finish what he started.”

The silence was all-consuming, almost as much as Sammy’s deity and his craving for lost souls to drag to the puddles had proven to be. It wasn’t only in spite of his care for the woman but alongside it that the man had abided by such folly. He protected her by the definition of caring not only her body but her heart; so easily was he swayed by her desires to be at peace with the world in which she was trapped for who knows how long.

…But now they knew how long could maybe be so, very short thanks to his and Francine’s assurance in the demon, and so the angel prepared her finishing strike for someone already down for the count. Maybe so much venom had been released in their last meeting in her explanation for hating him in the past, but now she had one concise truth for why she hated him now.

“You are a shepherd, my dear, naïve Lawrence,” she spitefully, ragefully relished to inform him as the worst of possibilities came true, “And you led your lamb to the slaughter.”

Something so long coming- something he sang and prayed for day after day for decades, desired himself to pass- should not have landed upon his shoulders and knock wind from his lungs as suddenly as it did.

In that second, everything he had done- all the sense it made to him, all the intricate strings that wove together the flowing cloth of fate made from each decision, each thought, each emotion that led up to this moment…-

…Didn’t make sense to him at all.

It was like walking upon a path and looking back only to find that the view behind was nothing like looking ahead, even if you were already there to witness it. But despite the chaos of a racing mind, there was one distinct belief that made its way to his tongue in a desperate attempt to explain it all, to justify what led him here, and without his friend:

“…I just wanted her to be happy.”

So quietly muttered, so shameful like sin. And as he said it, he realized that so long ago…he was right. When Francine’s decided to journey for the demon, Sammy simply looked on and thought to himself that maybe being happy isn’t as important as the patience of faith. Of course, he too, eventually, tried to search for happiness like she, and what did that make him?

Hardly happy at all.

But even if Alice knew his story, it wouldn’t stop her from driving the point home like a knife in his chest- that was what he deserved after sentencing her to a life sentence in the same purgatory they’ve had… that they prayed she could avoid, hope against hope.

“Well now she can be happy being dead. That is…unless we still have time to do something about it.”

Somehow a statement both relieving- she’d help, Alice would help-! And yet so very, very grave, reeking with death either coming or already starting to rot as they idled about to speak.

Skeptical, the seraph took yet another step forward- scrutinizing, flickering her one eye up and down in a lack of assurance while the gaping holes in her head somehow seemed to beg he not even receive a chance to explain himself.

“I…do assume you coming to me can only mean you must doubt your… _‘lord’s’_ decision to take her?” Even if it was inflected as a question, both could see through the shadows the truth of her words; if there was any lack of assurance that he wasn’t ready to do something- dare it be said something against what his god willed…- she might be as good as gone no matter what they tried.

Of course, a man whose life was painted by the brush of faith never framed a picture like before, much less on his desperate way to see the keeper of his last hope. After all, the heresy of suicide to a soul such as his already gone was very…very different than actively stepping into the destiny God sets forth to take place. His eyes fell to the floor, and silence took over once again, choking his mouth until not even the most guttural, primal of reactions to such violent upheaval of his existence could sound into the dark. Alice normally would have relished such an opportunity- to force him to verbally agree to abandon his god entirely in order to save the woman he protected in his name and, finally, finally hearing him say he was wrong- but there simply wasn’t the time. And it seemed like he might be doing it already on his own.

“Good,” the angel answered to promises unspoken.

“…Where do we begin?” he finally answered with a hush hardly a whisper, so hollowed with the idea of disobeying and yet unsure how to go on any other way. His mask- that mask, the one a master had bestowed upon his prophet so he may gaze upon glory- it was now being used to accept and ponder in his heart what Sammy had always considered evil.

Sharply, however, one gloved hand raised up with a point intended to silence, the other coming to her chin in contemplation. As level as she appeared, panic crawled her skin inside out, shaking her insides already so delicately and barely put together in the first place. This was serious; of course, so many of her efforts constantly threatened with the waiting arms of the puddles and starting all over again were grave matters, too...

But with Francine, however, it wasn’t coming back that was the trouble. It’s different to start over as Alice did into a base state, but Francine? _Truly_ starting over is what this first, most crucial death would be, becoming something with absolutely nothing left that was her own.

Everything Alice cherished and had privately, secretively wished to maintain- that had survived despite inky death’s disgusting reach for the girl’s soul…

 _That_ _was at stake._

Alice couldn’t be human again. She knew it. But she still treasured that which she had strived so hard to emulate, and for the young woman’s body to die but her soul to live on- to be…connected to the wails and aches and the _god-DAMN_ sensation of your mind swirling and swirling away forever into nothingness…-!

“Shut up and let me think!” she barked, uncaring if it was really at he or her own trepidation.

Heart racing and lips slightly parted, the man with no ideas yet so many, many clambering worries was helpless but to watch the wisdom he called upon pace the room, her growing panic radiating until he began to fear himself if she who purposefully tempted and toyed with the demon before had any wisdom about him at all.

_Snap!_

Both her fingers and her posture changed to fit this word; briefly, the image of this woman drained of color was impressed into Sammy’s mind- undeniably, a striking glow about her of determination and a very, very hesitant yet still brilliant hope.

It enthralled him so greatly that it slowed by half a second his reaction to her speeding out of the room. The sight of the dying again Piper flickered in his peripheral before he too left that only witness behind.

“Where are we going?!”

The straying shadows of the halls flew over them one by one like migrating gulls, lines of dullness and glimmerings that played with the tones of oil and paper that built up a man made of ink and a broken doll from discarded mortality. The walls groaned with the sound of the pipes as they weaved down the tight halls and then sprawled out into the room of corpses, like searchers were coming to life inside of them. The gulf of ink seemed to quiver just a little more as the two traversed over wooden plank bridges, like invisible drops were being added slowly, one by one to disrupt the usual stillness of the black lake. She didn’t even look back to address Sammy, allowing the click of her shoes and the slosh of his feet to converse in their place until- in the most quiet, willful divulgence of schemes normally kept to herself…-

“There’s only _ONE_ thing that even has a sliver of a chance against the ink demon! Only _ONE_ of these monsters among us that has no sense to leave him alone if they happen upon each other…and the only one that has the strength to give the demon anything that even resembles a fight.”

Before Sammy knew it, he had followed her into the elevator once again so very soon, watching light gloss the length of her thumb as it jabbed into the button that read “14.”

 

* * *

 

If Sammy had ever been down here, it hadn’t been a time he could remember. It was a room that once you stepped out and stood atop of its tower, looking down upon the abyss of ink, it was like entering a giant, gaping wound. While she rushed out, his arrival was slow, gasping as he saw how simply…vast it was before him; it was like looking down upon their universe itself, witnessing ink cover and shine across the floor far below and flow into two rooms he couldn’t see into from where he stared.

“Fool! Keep! _MOVING!”_

Of course, Alice was on edge, but the atmosphere didn’t help. There was one pipe in the corner of the massive chamber that continued to _drip, drip, drip_ as she stormed down, down, down.

It was like hearing a clock tick, and each passing second brought with it more and more traces of the possibility this is all for nothing and Francine was already as good as dead. It was so nerve-wracking that she couldn’t even recall if that drip was there before in the most recent time she had traversed this forsaken level.

And as Sammy finally scurried down close behind, he would learn that this place felt so ominous to him for a very good reason.

The splash of ink against his legs as he navigated across the wide hall was so haunting, so…emptying; he could feel it- he could feel it trying to pull him back in. He couldn’t let that happen. Any day but today. Any time but now. And so against the reaches of the wanting, selfish grasps of the puddles bleeding from the floor into his soul, he ripped his legs again and again up and out until-…

Until…well…he wasn’t sure. It seemed endless. His chest felt paralyzed, as if it didn’t want him to breathe, and each labored step left him wondering if he could keep up with the angel- who was more and more looking less like a person and more like a flicker of a shape up again. Almost as if his lord’s aura was in his mind, once again fading, consuming shadows ate at the corners of his sight.

But at the same time, everything felt so much brighter, too, as the prophet caught these glimpses of the most innocent form his god chose to take.

But then one of the clunky devices that streamed the cartoons _moved,_ and that was when Sammy finally comprehended maybe not where he was but precisely what they had came for.

How funny how you couldn’t have given Sammy anything in the world before this moment to get him to agree to see the projectionist by his own accord.

The being Sammy had only come across in either coincidence or thanks to a will not of his own cocked that machine that either replaced a skull of covered it to the side, intense light glowing over a seraph and a preacher until they couldn’t even see each other’s corrupt faces. Sammy could note, however, that while his own body quaked with fear- aware of this creature that held an incredible, otherworldly ability no one else but his lord possessed, walking through walls with no seeming point besides to terrorize that in his path as he searched for…something, something surely he’d never find down in the depths of hell-…

…Alice was calm. Almost as if his presence was not a danger but a relief.

_“Norman.”_

That lit-up gaze so firmly upon the man struggling to keep an already melting form from sinking into the pool beneath them finally shifted to the woman that called his real, true name. This was a very different meeting than their last; instead of coming alone to confess the everlasting pains in her heart about a man that prodded her into such aching discomfort, she brought him with her.

And looking lost in one way now came across as something totally other.

With a cock of his head that appeared to be listening, Sammy gasped once more as he saw not one pair of hands but two lift as Alice guided fingers much bigger than her own to grasp around her jaw.

 _“ALICE-!”_ Sammy instinctively yelped at the contact of such massive, ruthless hands upon her already torn face, but soon he was interrupted by both a one-eyed glare from one person ahead and a mouthless screech of the other. With a grunt he took a step back, shocked and amazed, and the two strange friends stared their spite into him just a second longer before a halo bounced back to face the light.

“I need-” she began, once more, the effort to ease the sound of her own voice obvious, _“-You to help us_.”

A small crackle, Norman’s eyeless gape moving from one intruder to the other. Sammy saw her jaw tremble slightly as the projectionist’s hands began to roam her face. He assumed that this touch meant he could- unbelievably- attempt to feel her words in place of hearing them, a deaf man finding a way to somehow communicate without ears or a voice of his own.

But of course, he heard Francine almost guess as much herself.

Alice bit back her own uncertainty if after all these years he could ever hear her as they did this at all.

“I need-” she repeated, a firm desperation more tangible as one palm held her cheek and the other grazed over her lips, “-You to help us…fight the demon.”

A long, long silence. Perhaps she expected more in response- maybe so did Sammy, but his mulling over that impossible utterance of fighting the _demon_ distracted him enough to not ponder it for long. When nothing more changed but the lingering of dust motes through the gradually dimming ray from Norman’s face, Alice decided it was time to get to the point.

And from what she knew of his experience with the mortal woman, Alice hoped it would be enough for the projectionist to agree to a what can only be described as a fool’s errand.

_“She’s gone. Francine. He took her.”_

A small twitch, his light flickering brighter with a few quiet ticks of machinery, but her eye wasn’t squinting and her mouth wasn’t grimacing because of anything the metallic man had done. No, it was herself- what she was forcing herself to say just like Sammy did not even thirty minutes before.

Her own hands smoothed over his, begging maybe as much as her voice as his grasp moved one set of fingers towards her eye and horn while the other caressed her cheek.

“The best chance we have to keep her from being killed, too… _is you.”_

As other hearts stayed still upon the floor, the one in Sammy’s chest pounded so hard he wasn’t sure if nothing more was said after that or if his pulse simply drowned it out. Before him, the monster so painfully slowly began to drop his hands from the angel’s face to let them dangle by his sides; if Norman could, in fact, understand language, then surely this would have been a conveying of complete and utter shock.

And it did, indeed, seem to match such a response.

One foot stumbled back.

Then another.

And then another.

Alice found her own arms falling as well with the projectionist’s release, and soon she and Sammy were mirrored as they watched at the man and prayed that however he chose to react would be in their-…no, _her_ favor.

And when Norman was a good two meters or so away from the two cursed wanderers that had asked a third to find their fourth, he allowed his light to filter over them until its luster eventually even faded so far as to fall onto the door of the Little Miracle Station, a pathetic piece of wood ripped from its and allowing ink to lap over its edges since the very first time he met Francine.

Alice and Sammy would have believed if they were told their own hearts were dissected and thrown to the floor, too, after the projectionist made use of a power they hoped to have had on their side, the only soul that could even stand a second against Bendy then simply turning to a solid wall and walking right through it to heaven knows where.

So very soon, a man and woman were alone once more as they stood against God himself, the pipe in the distance dripping as it knew fully well they could feel each and every second slip away.


	4. A Jealous God

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness spreads over Egypt – darkness that can be felt.’”_ – Exodus 10:21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few things! First of, Friday the 9th (tomorrow, as I'm posting this) is the 1 year anniversary of my AU! As such, I'm posting a chapter today on the eve and tomorrow- REALLY big, really important chapters that are going to change, well, maybe everything! So yeah, look out for another chapter tomorrow...and expect something very, very signifigant :3c
> 
> Additionally, I got art from Meta for the Dances arc! It's in here, please check it out!
> 
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/179860668958/metallicartist-just-a-bunch-of-requests-from

They didn’t have time for futile feelings, Sammy found as he and the angel began marching once again down the corridors of paper, wood, and ink.

“So we are simply going to keep…wandering like this until he comes?” Incredulous, almost biting. Wasting time-! Was this the best they could do?!

“Yes. He’ll come. _He always comes when I’m out too long.”_ It’s simply a matter of fact, but still spoken so bitterly from a woman cursed to never feel free to leave her shelter, be it the demon, the searchers, or the gang. “Either that or we…find him first.”

A pause.

“And her,” she added, maybe an assurance more for herself than to him.

“…I don’t…expect her to be with him if he does come to greet us,” Sammy confessed.

“Me neither. But it’s this and hoping we can reach back to where he took her from there…or nothing…well, besides destroying those infernal cutouts. But we’re no help to Francine in the puddles if we decide to pick a fight with him.”

How ironic, considering they plead with Norman to try to do so only moments before. But having the demon mad at him as they tried to reach Francine would have been far different from having the god become enraged at _them._

Having no idea what the projectionist left to do- if his escape was a conscious decision or merely one like overwhelming a nonsentient beast, the angel and prophet united only for love of one unlike them both were helpless but to be vulnerable in hopes that somehow, this would set her free-

A flicker of light from a crossroads a long distance away.

Alice gasped and felt hair hit the side of her face with her jump, and Sammy felt his skin crawl in anticipation.

…

…

Nothing more.

With renewed urgency, a hand reached back for Sammy and lurched him forward as she continued the same way, ensuring he was dragged behind even despite his melting, stressed body and unsureness of faith and what having it was meant to be. Almost as if it existed to heighten her own rising panic, Alice Angel noticed little things in their world getting louder and louder, more and more upset just like she.

The dripping of ink was faster.

The creaks of the floorboards threatened more and more a desire to break beneath them.

Everything was darker, and no shadow stood still.

_…Something was not right._

Another noise, another light causing the two to jump once more and skid to a halt. Alice put a finger to her shredded lips, and Sammy’s flat eyes searched about in prayer that their lord’s inky webbing would crawl over the walls once more.

…

…A small noise. A single footstep, a falling board?

…

…

Nothing more.

And despite Sammy’s trepidation, they moved towards the noise instead of away.

“Demon…!” his new companion taunted in a sing-song tone, swallowing back her fear to try to sound as coy as possible. “I’m wandering all alone! I thought that was a sin. Won’t you come see…?”

Sammy cringed, and so did Alice, but the demon still did not come.

Or maybe he had, because a hallway they had surely crossed before now only had a blank wall where a path used to be.

 

* * *

 

Usually nothing so weighty fell upon studio floors, was on its own so loud and invasive. In some ways, it was a blessing that Norman choose the refuge of his cove; the ink muted his heavy steps, the walls didn’t carry his screeching voice, and the maze kept him busy, busy, busy- ambling eternally with ever-changing sensations and stimuli for a mindless being to react to with only the interruption of those foolish enough to knowingly travel down and step in his way.

As the projectionist chose now, though, to leave the presence of the two who sought him out, one could only wonder if that was a decision of logical sense or merely physical sense. Was he out here, looking for Francine as they plead for? Was he upset at the news, and unwilling to banish them from his lair simply left it himself to grieve a woman surely lost to the same ink that took him too? Or did he even know or feel anything at all, and merely was confronted with too much at once- like an animal backing into a corner and escaping to anywhere- anything- that would relieve the overwhelm of not one visitor but an unheard of two?

Kismets must have found it did not matter, as it all turned out the same regardless.

The studio noticed this deviance- this… _difference._ It was _unsettling._ It was _unsure._

So it sought to correct it, now that there be a need. There couldn’t be chances- not now, especially not now.

A small sputter erupted from the speaker in the headless man’s chest as his gleaming, seeing ray of light turned a corner and fell upon a wall. Now, normally this was nothing so unsettling to Norman; previously he’d had staggered into one of who knows how many dead-end nooks in his labyrinth. When such happened, all that would occur in response was a short stare- a contemplation of the texture of wood bars, of hearts and corpses left upon the floor- and he’d eventually set forth once more the way he came.

But this was different.

He may not have known this new maze like the back of his ink-soaked hand, but even the basest of sensations couldn’t mistake what he witnessed.

Unquestionably, just a sliver of a second- Norman caught the wall ahead as it finished building itself up in front of a path that went far further than it intended him to go.

Maybe it was because he knew something was behind it.

Maybe he was merely frustrated.

Regardless, the pipes carried all of the sound, force, and fury of a man that didn’t want to be contained by no choice but his own, releasing the cracking of wood underneath slamming knuckles and a cry so loud it could break glass.

 

* * *

 

Sammy felt the noise crawl up his spine, the distant thump of something crashing in the distance; it sounded the way aching bones felt- somehow distant yet close, softened yet sharp. A yelp escaped his lips and made him jump in place, shoulders tensing and fingers parting as his mask turned every which way, searching for its direction.

As he did, however, he noticed the darkness at the edge of his sight- always there but not always blinding- grow a more prominent border around his vision.

But a coming obscuring had arrived to late, and Sammy finally noticed what Alice did.

_“Something isn’t right.”_

The black and white angel thrown from heaven into hell knew very well what the latter was like. This world may have been terrible, but it had been calm. Calm ever since Henry finally left one way or another.

She got a taste of it slipping back previously, when Francine ran and ran down the path of the demon, the universe falling apart under her feet. Such revelation as it appeared again now made her eye widen with fear, as if it caught in its reflection the truth not seen with eyes alone. A whisper, a whisper of something she didn’t know she had always prayed to never live through once more:

_“It’s happening all over again.”_

 Any further revelation or explanation to the man beside was interrupted, a familiar but so much more haunting croak travelling much too far, much too clear for physical possibilities. The breaking pipes carried the utterances of beasts, and in a single moment one by one the pipes that lined the ceiling burst open in upset.

In prevention of their meeting and finding whatever turmoil lay ahead, the flurry of ink closed in from a _crack, crack, CRACK_ from either side of the hallway, trapping the two in place.

Surely the ink was going to rain down upon them, and being made from the same blood as the machine they were to simply melt away-

No.

When the final break occurred- two ends inevitably meeting right where they stood, the ink blinded them, pushed them down…

And pulled away from their eyes to somewhere they couldn’t cause trouble.

Flailing arms couldn’t push back a flood, and shouts couldn’t fight back the rush of liquid void.

It had never been so obvious in all their lives that the studio itself seemed to have a mind and magic far beyond whatever curse penetrated to their own souls as the spitting ink swallowed them and blew them away from the entrails of the building into the clearing of Heavenly Toys, even when it was nowhere in sight.

 

* * *

Norman’s fist flew once more into the wall, its wood texture and smiling poster doing nothing to deter the violence of a man interfered.

A lack of response only seemed to stir up more from him; his fingers pulled in and out at their knuckles with either pain, stiffness, or a desire for improvement from a hand that failed not once but twice to destroy the barrier ahead.

With either bone or mechanics crackling in it, too, his giant hand pulled back, clenched once more, and aimed dead center for that Bendy’s teasing grin.

_…Crack!_

_…Crack!_

_…Crack-_

And the glove of the demon reached out hold a leathery fist at bay, not even half an inch from contacting a flat, unmoving smile.

Right before him, that same face staggered into reality, the projectionist greeted by a swarm of pulsing black stains and rainfall of ink as a shape used his form as an anchor to drag itself out of the page.

The dancing demon finally came out to play.

 

* * *

 

Somehow far too quiet and way too loud, the entrance of the toy shop making a man and woman feel like they were dolls simply placed to and fro with the whim of a child.

At first it was overwhelming to the point they froze as if they couldn’t move on their own. So tall. So empty. Only plushes, cutouts, stairs, and seats to say hello while Sammy and Alice lifted themselves, coughing out ink even though the same material made their own lungs. The room didn’t hold a touch of the halls they were within just a second before, and distantly, once again, cries rang out that were surely unhuman.

But if Alice was an incomplete doll still sewing itself together, then she was not to be played with, and with that along with the fire inside that swept over her brighter and stronger with each wind of change- each second of precious humanity ticking away- _precious humanity she had only begun to know she cherished- it was gone, IT’S GOING TO BE GONE, SHE IS GOING TO DIE UNLESS-_

Sammy flew back once again not with a physical force but with the shock, with the fear of destroying what was sacred as Alice attacked the nearest cutout with her bare hands. Going in one direction didn’t last long, however, as Sammy either in instinct or common sense threw him around her arms, gripping her wrists tight as the woman’s fingers clawed as he held them in the air.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

The broken half of her face came to see him, hatred for the image ahead burning once more for the same upon his mask.

Determination.

Even for a woman defined by that word- fighting and working every day for her life to be what she wanted to be- this was a moment where maybe never before had it meant so much to her.

“PUDDLES BE DAMNED! I ALREADY LOST IT ALL! I’M GOING TO BRING HIM TO ME EVEN IF I HAVE TO DIE AGAIN TO DO IT!!! NOW LET-”

Her elbow swung forward.

_“-GO OF ME!!!”_

Her elbow swung back, a blow right into chest that forced Sammy to loosen his grip and stagger.

And Alice set forth to scar and demolish the face of the demon until it stopped him from doing the same to Francine.

 

* * *

 

Yet another cry from Norman Polk, either disturbed or satisfied as he finally could let loose ferocity against a being that would fight back.

Exchange for exchange, tooth and nail from a creature with one and a creature with the other. The sounds of violence filled the air with voiceless utterances and flesh pounding against something not skin.

But nothing is mightier than a god, not even those without the sense to run while they still could.

_Thud, thud-_

**_Smack!_ **

Something akin to a car crash rang as a projector head was thrown back, something like the screech of brakes sounding as the demon wrapped a paw around his neck.

And placed the other on the source of his searchlight.

A quick jerk upward and a decapitation-

…

…

Left unfinished.

Norman scrambled up to his feet as soon as he hit the floor, but it wasn't in time. The demon silently made his leave, the projectionist’s hands pounding into a wall just as the coming darkness ate the lord’s presence and faded as soon as it came…

 

* * *

 

…Only for it to return.

Sammy noticed it first, but of course he would.

A prophet knows his god.

“My- my lord, my-!”

He couldn’t even finish.

But Alice could.

Gasping for air with the effort of destruction, Alice’s gaze became sharp with dread-

But then, a smile sliced into her face.

“Demon…there you are.”

She wasn’t even sure what she was going to next. The desperation of a moment left blank an actual plan for a woman usually so cunning, so ready for anything.

But even as she didn’t prepare for this, for once she felt in control and allowed herself to relish it before decades of work went to waste.

Sammy’s misshapen foot stepped back, trailing ink underneath like a paintbrush as anxiety took his voice and left him unable to act besides clutching a hand to his chest and wait.

Wait as the aura of their lord swallowed them.

But Alice stood tall against it.

She had _had it._ All he could do was put her back to the beginning, to send her back to the puddles. She framed that as the worst, and it emboldened her to go beyond where she had ever gone.

The shadow of the demon loomed over her, raspy breath falling upon her. Closer, closer, closer-

But then something.

_Something._

**_Something._ **

It wasn’t a sound, a sight, or a feeling. It was simply…there- tangible only to the powers of God, and something changed everything. The **splatter** shooting up the walls- over the corners of the ballroom for playthings- **retracted** as fast as a sudden step back.

He stared a second longer before once again leaving prey untouched.

A smile never withered so fast.

“N-no!” At first hopeless, helpless- but then sadness and confusion upon her face warped into comprehension.

He left for a reason. _There must be a reason, something strong enough to distract him from delivering his wrath._

_…Francine-!_

And before Sammy could react Alice lunged for another cutout, believing her still to be alive, believing she could bring him back…

…But belief wasn’t enough. Instead of a demon, she brought a storm. As nails streaked off paint from one toon’s flat face, its angle curved not because of her wrist but because of her feet falling beneath her.

The world itself quaked.

The sign of “Heavenly Toys” teetered with the trembling universe, a cutting squeak before it crashed to the floor.

The fountain of ink exploded like a volcano to cover every last inch with its black.

But instead of drowning and crushing, disaster behaved like a broken heart.

And the world as they hardly knew it crumbled away.

 


	5. Diptych

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”_ – James 1:8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of today (November 9, 2018) it's the 1 year anniversary of my Hymns of Struggle AU!!! In celebration, this is the second chapter in a two part segment. Thank you, AceofIntuition for beta reading this chapter and the last!!!
> 
> I ALSO GOT ANNIVERSARY ART FROM MY FRIEND STAR!!! I. Legitimately teared up so I implore you to look at it.
> 
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/179928431043/startistdoodles-today-is-the-one-year
> 
>  **ONE LAST VERY IMPORTANT NOTE:** I _heavily_ recommend that this chapter should be read only directly after or very shortly after reading the one before it, "A Jealous God." If you are reaching this chapter and have had a break in between this one and the one before (probably longer than a day or so), **I think it would be an excellent idea to refresh yourself on the previous chapter before reading this one in order to receive the full impact.**

What’s there to live for after you die?

Joey Drew Studios knew the answer to such a…contradictory notion far too well.

Especially so the man after which a buildings of burnt dreams was named.

A scream cut short rang out once more as if it never stopped at all as its owner was thrown to the floor. It echoed- echoed, echoed, echoed. From the perspective of eyes skewed shut, it seemed to go on forever.

The old artist knew it did.  

After all, her words did ring deep into his heart; of course, they had to go on forever wall through wall if it went on forever through _him._

That’s how it all worked.

The man’s lips trembled, but he clenched his fists. His heart pounded, but he forced his gaze soft as her screaming voice began to stop, now heaving breaths one by one like coals into a fire. Such growing quiet was either the beginning of peace or of something much more ominous. He wouldn’t blame her either way, but of course hoped for one more than the other.

He didn’t ask for this himself, but he supposed he simultaneously did.

**_He screams for her._ **

“Be calm. Be still,” he prayed, kneeling next to the woman as she arrived not to his office but to the place Francine and Joey first met. In the corner of one eye, the demon remained- barely, barely within sight, shadows covering it until it was like it was on the edge of reality.

In the corner of the other, an ocean of ink had grown unsettled. Awareness- an awareness of change.

He could handle change. He had to.

A tinge of pink caught his gaze, the sudden arrival causing the bag in her clutches to skid across the floor, straps touching the ankles of a table where he sat the woman down and confessed his sins.

Even if he hadn’t confessed the all, it was still right. It was still right.

Her before him now was proof that ignorance was bliss.

What was he going to do now-?

No, he knew.

That’s why she was here.

“You’re safe.”

**_He falls silent._ **

…Control.

He had control.

That’s what he told himself just as Francine finally broke free from the shock, jumping back while laying on the wooden shore with a gasp. Her eyes widened with an expression Joey had seen from her before, but not like this- not for him _directly._

Horror.

As she scrambled back with her bare hands, uncaring if palms became splintered with the movement, Francine gaped at the man, somehow comprehending who he was yet not even grasping a sliver of his true nature at all.

The man behind it all.

The man who took her.

The man who would not let her go.

Joey swallowed back bile as a shine in her eyes told him what he already knew- that _she_ knew. A mouth opened to scream again- right back at him- but that wouldn’t help at all.

No, that just wouldn’t do.

For every hyperventilating yelp came a shush; the more panicked, sharp her breath became, the softer, firmer arrived his. Francine’s shoulder lurched back but shock left her muscles still thawing, and so a reaching father’s hand found its place to rest upon her as the other had a single finger come to his lips.

The stolen woman finally had no breath left with which to gasp and cry, and so the force of fear ran from her tongue to her eyes despite the blurring tunnel vision of adrenaline.

A rosy face leaning in closer, cheeks streaked with sideburns the same color as the hair under a black-stained hat. A bowtie of deep blue was strung around his neck like the most gorgeous of nooses. The hand that touched his lips was scarred across the palm, and golden eyes twitched with worry behind half-closed lids.

She had seen all this before, but he couldn’t hide yet again that the same light that shone in the ink when you never looked at it too close was the same that slid across the serenely panicking irises ahead.

That sliver of sight into a soul unsteady began to close once more, though, as seconds passed. Finally, her gasping slowed as she marveled at him until it was quiet enough for Joey to begin to speak-

“WHAT THE _FUCK?!”_

As soon as Francine had the sense to focus she had the sense to question. A gentle grasp at her shoulder was promptly thrown aside.

**_She strikes him. His mask almost falls off yet again._ **

“Darling-” A level tone tinged with worry quickly interrupted once more.

_“What the hell?!”_

Clambering to her feet, her eyes somehow stayed wide while being pinched with outrage, her fingers clenched, too- but not to calm.

She hadn’t calmed at all.

“You- you- you…!”

So accusatory. The waves of their black and brown beach rose just a bit higher before meeting the surface.

“…You _lied to me…!”_

Like a dad coming to comfort a daughter learning that Santa wasn’t real far too soon for her age, the pain in his gaze mirrored hers, both sets beginning to gloss over.

“I know. I know. I’m so sorry-”

“NO YOU’RE _NOT!”_

**_They leave. She won’t say where she’s taking them._ **

“Now darling- I told you not to go about wandering for a reason,” Joey responded coolly, palms raised up in a gesture of comfort. Of course, it did nothing of the sort.

“Yeah! Of course you did.” Maybe the sound from her throat was lesser in volume, but the hiss it produced was somehow so, so much worse- so…venomous. She had every right to be. The young woman’s eyes searched over him, taking in every detail with new understanding. “…You didn’t want me to know what you’re doing.”

And then.

Only then-

Did she grasp that knowing you don’t know is only the beginning of knowing at all.

And the ways of a woman kept alive only by her desire to comprehend, to shine her flashlight onto each and every dusty cobweb of lost memories and forgotten souls, took over once more.

Only this time, it was so much more personal. The vulnerability made her skin crawl, only now realizing she who had longed to make herself such to others had been visible inside out to Joey likely from the very first second she swooped across the gaze of a cardboard cutout.

Francine felt her blood swarm at her bent elbows and locked knees as the most complex word of all came upon her tongue:

_“…Why?”_

Hands still up twitched slightly, gently, just a bit closer towards the girl, accompanied by a minute cock of the head. He had done this for so long, Joey didn’t even comprehend where such a question could even go.

“What do you mean, Frankie-?”

“YOU _KNOW_ WHAT I MEAN, STOP FUCKING WITH ME!”

**_He leaves them alone in his cove._ **

Perhaps it was that invasion of privacy- her name, he knew her goddamn name because _she fucking told him_ , of COURSE she had to tell him, and she didn’t even know he was right there listening when she whispered it to Sammy- that made her so loud, so bitter and impatient.

If she had waited since she arrived to know why she had to stay, what did that mean for a man who had eighty years to ponder what he had done? What was she but a drop in the bucket?

But even a drop of rain from above can send ripples through an ocean.

Joey cringed, a soft rattle up his spine visible as shoulders tightened and fingers curled shut in front of his chest. With coming anxiety, the cream-colored ghost used the tension upon his body to roll his shoulders back, stand tall, and raise his chin so the unnatural glow of the room made the ink spots upon his glasses more visible than his eyes.

The ink ocean behind Joey witnessing this stopped its small, crashing waves, the upset moving to ripple further in the distance- deeper away into the endless cavern that echoed hurt feelings. The force of it simply made black water lap at the soles of his shoes once more.

He knew this moment was coming for not only as long as she had begun to catch on but for maybe years- _decades_ …and yet he still needed time to compose his thoughts.

Francine, in all her breathlessness, was helpless but to wait for an answer. Everything she puzzled together had to be coaxed piece by piece, but Joey held still so many in his selfish hands.

Where to begin? Life? Death? Together? Alone? Each point in his miserable existence felt so poignant to how he ended up standing where he was now.

But there was, after all, only one reason she was standing where she was. And so a tale with no first page was flipped to the last chapter, praying that a girl of great empathy could show sympathy instead- for herself, for the twist in the story that made his stomach turn upside down with both the rush of hope and the dread of if nothing had changed at all.

He did know her so, very well to expect such.

“I’ve told you time and time again that this curse is…different with you, Frankie. That it’s been kinder.” He shook his head. “But you’ve had no idea what it was like before you stepped in and calmed it down. You deserve to know…why. Why it’s different.”

And a power beyond his own curse grasped his throat and choked out new belief.

“It’s because _you_ are.”

And what could she say to that?

So a man forcing himself silent for about as long as a person lives and dies finally let go and spoke all he had adored and dreaded thanks to an intruder of whom he had grown fond.

“In all my years there’s never been someone who…arrived for someone else. Out of…kindness. Selflessness, darling- it’s not…common. In fact, it gets snuffed out about as soon as it comes to candlelight- like a flame pinched as soon as it’s lit. It…grabbed me, Frankie. Grabbed me before anything worse that already happened to you could come and drag you away. Your cousin…oh, that poor boy. You wouldn’t have come if you didn’t hope to find him here- if you didn’t want him back. And even unknowingly…not even if you died trying.”

The shadow of his hat- a symbol of his hiding- slid over his nose with a slight downward tilt of his head. Finally, finally, rosy fingers trembled as they clutched its brim, and the darkness over his eyes fell off as a cream, ink-splotted top hat was brought down to his chest in order to contain a heart overflowing.

“And to the very first being you met within this otherworldly nightmare come to consume flesh…you said you didn’t want to hurt him…! Do you know how many people arrived, Frankie? Arrived and screamed- and rightfully so- but never once considered that the abominations before them were victims, too?”

She could feel his wandering, marveling gaze as if she was something special. It made every pore of her skin goosebump, like he was trailing a finger over every spot.

But of course, he had seen every spot.

Every moment.

From the beginning.

“And your loving touch only grew and grew as each horror came upon you. As each soul of my studio came and called themselves a monster, you stepped forward and corrected that they were not only a person but a _friend._ Even to me, and I know very well I’m the only one worth calling a monster at all.”

A chuckle. It reached his crow’s feet- crinkled his face. He hadn’t smiled until she came, and it was so very bittersweet every time since but especially so now.

“If the curse is an infection, then at times you…you seem to be the cure. Did you ever notice how upon your second visit to Susie that a staircase was gone when you walked in, but upon your return to Sammy’s waiting arms it had healed underneath your feet? How the lights glowed warmer and warmer as it drifted to kiss your skin? How the boards stopped to creak, and the pipes began to hum instead of screech their horrible song?” Another, firmer huff of a laugh- not in humor but in a hollow pain. “Of course not. The world simply seems as good as you feel, my dear. That’s the truth.”

That hesitant smile eventually found its reason to fade, the glitter in his eyes not leaving but dulling as eyes became slits and left only so much space for hopes and dreams to show.

“And so such a sharp turn into destruction couldn’t slip past your nose. The more you found, the more your calm decayed. By the time you came to find me I simply…couldn’t allow it any longer.”

Stressed fingers gently readjusted around his hat to help recompose.

“Not if it meant that you’d be in danger again.”

And with his confession done, a redheaded scalp lost the vulnerability so shortly gained, and that shadow once more like a curtain closed concealed a bleeding heart.

“I don’t…expect you to understand, Frankie. This is all far beyond anyone else can understand. What I’ve done to keep you and this studio safe and sound isn’t something any human being is supposed to imagine…but here I am, and here you are.”

The woman felt a hand come to her jaw once more- but this time she had an awareness this was not only a touch of care but of _possession._

“I’ve…realized that it’s best if you stay with me now. That’s why you’re here. It’s…the best for you, Frankie. I promise.”

The palm upon her proved pliable, allowing her mouth to gape like eyes weren’t wide enough to take in everything he said. But finally- it served its purpose and gave her a voice. It may have been a whisper, but it arrived so very loud.

“That’s a lie.”

Joey gasped as a soft expression jerked out of his grasp, transforming as a snarl curled across such a delightful, loving girl’s face. It was like watching an angel come down to earth just to tell you your sins.

“Henry came for you.”

…But Joey did deserve to hear what he had shut out.

“I was never safe at all.”

…The atrocities this man allowed to befall not only his studio but everyone forevermore.

“And if you expect me to think that the guy who keeps me fucking trapped here is the person who wants best for me then boy do I have some news for you.”

**_They call for the demon down empty halls. They almost cross into the other._ **

“Stop. Stop, darling-”

“NO! You can’t stop me! _NOT ANYMORE!”_

**_He punches the barrier._ **

Joey grimaced, briefly screwing his eyes shut with a furrowed brow until the impact ceased.

“I’m not special at all! People died! People like _me!!!_ _YOUR OWN SON FUCKING DIED YOU PIECE OF SHIT!!!”_

Haunting silence. The kind that cuts the core out of souls, the kind that forces time to stand still.

“…You’re… _so_ much like him, you know,” Joey murmured to that, half praying to interrupt and still her rage and half speaking only for himself, like he was dusting off a bookshelf of memories kept in his chest.

“…Maybe that’s why you’re alive.”

A pause.

A step back.

_“You goddamn twisted bastard.”_

She was so disgusted that Francine didn’t notice the demon slipping away.

But _he_ did.

**_She notices, and now so does he._ **

“Darling, don’t go too far-” Joey pleaded, shaking his head and reaching his hands out once more, a touch of desperation reaching his eyes as the cartoonist attempted to coax her back- closer, within his reach if need be.

His pulse began to shake his jaw. Why was he so-…?

A spot. A familiar spot finally distinguishable- but of course, the color pink is something hard to miss upon a world stained black, white, and gold.

Instinctively, much to her opposition’s dismay, Francine stomped on the strap of the bag that came into her peripheral now that she had moved further from Joey and closer to the truth, keeping her possessions in place. If- if he- if he _really_ had so much control- could keep her by himself alone like she wasn’t a person but a china doll to keep prim and proper and placed where he pleased- boy was he gonna get a fucking kick in the face.

**_He is fighting back._ **

Two things in the bag- two things that wouldn’t do anything for her that was good. They both alarmed him, but for very different reasons.

Another pink object emerged into her clutches.

“What- what are you doing?!”

His distress was tangible, and it made Francine sneer in victory. She was right. She was right.

Maybe it couldn’t help anything but her own sanity- maybe it was at the expense of others- but if this was all a falsehood from the beginning, well…

She was right to not be alone.

“Do you really think that you can keep me-?! That y- that…that you can really just…keep me in this fucking place?!” Her hands pressed the phone screen on, making quick work of entering her apps. The glow of the device seemed to shine like her confidence- both futile yet so very strong.

All she had left.

“Well maybe you can! Maybe you fucking can!” she cried, frown pushing so far back it pinched her eyes nearly closed. “But you can’t keep me alone! You never could!”

So bitter, so pained. So-

Joey’s stare grew more panicked as she realized what she was contemplating.

“Darling- darling please-”

“Darling please WHAT?! I didn’t want my family to know I was gone! But if I’m really gone forever what’s the fucking point?! I’m NOT going to be here with YOU! I’m gonna tell them, _even if they can’t come!”_ Her breathing was heaved, and a luster came over her eyes-

But once more, she refused to cry.

“I’m not gonna be alone! You can’t MAKE me be alone!!!”

“Frankie, it _is pointless-_ please!”

The more his agitation shook his tone, the surer hers became.

Defiantly she pressed the call button and begged her mom would pick up even after tricking her into believing her daughter never wanted to be found.

 _“Please find me,”_ she worded to herself, praying to God that she could even hear her mother’s voice again. Voicemail- even a _voicemail-_ please…!

God answered, a god hoping to spare any more pain, having lied and hid so much only for it to become worse before his eyes by his own hand.

“…She won’t be there.”

“Shut the HELL up!!!”

Francine turned her head away, biting her lip and stomping the ground as the call didn’t…even go to voicemail.

It was like it was dead.

…

…

Francine swallowed something truly horrid down and checked her last messages.

_Me (10:12 PM): I need to do some thinking, Mom. Having him gone made me realize some things. Im going to be gone for a while. Take care of him, take care of yourself mama_

**_Mom (10:13 PM):_ ** _I dont understand_

…

Wh-what was…?!

A trembling finger scrolled up.

…

 **_Mom (10:04 PM):_ ** _What are you talking about?_

 **_Mom (10:05 PM):_ ** _Answer me_

 **_Mom (10:08 PM):_ ** _Frankie where are you_

 **_Mom: (10:08 PM):_ ** _stop being moody and come home. im sick of it. We miss you. cme see Gabby_

 **_Mom: (10:09 PM):_ ** _hes been asking to see you. Don’t do this now when we need you. Dont do this to him._

_…_

Why did her messages…

...Look like that?

 **_Mom_ ** _**(9:45 PM):** We found him behind the grocery in the next town over_

 **_Mom_ ** _**(9:49 PM):** He’s scraped up on the knees and we’re taking him to the doctor but Gabby looks alright_

It was… ** _darker._**

The text was never that dark, that rich with black-

A second attempt started before searching the texts continued to ring dead, Francine numb to the sound and blood filled her ears.

 **_Mom_ ** _**(9:40 PM):** Frankie we found him!!!!!_

“You’re alone, Frankie.”

Joey folded his hands guiltily over her heart, barely visible behind Francine’s phone. Just like all else consumed by the ink, the dead was brought back to life…

**…And it was at Joey’s mercy.**

He could manipulate video, he could manipulate text, but he couldn’t fake a mother actually picking up a phone and answering her child.

Not when there was never service at all.

Tears finally broke trembling lashes.

“I’m so sorry. I only wanted you to not worry about them-”

Never had a louder scream rung out, a woman broken to pieces all over again repeating history.

Joey was unfazed as a flash of pink grazed the side of his head, a cell phone plopping into the ocean of ink behind him.

There was so much more to dread hitting him in the face.

**_She breaks a cutout._ **

And history repeated itself once more in a way entirely new. The ink behind Joey couldn’t resist keeping up an illusion of peace- of things better than they really were. It was all he had, so it was all it did.

The liquid void pulled back, then forward. It skimmed past his shoes and all the way to her toes.

When it pulled back, the ink that took away had given it back, fake assurances from both herself and someone not her mother beaming up with the same lie as it had always been.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered once more, but the tears in his eyes meant little to her. His twitches, his grimaces- his reactions to the world changing meant nothing to she who saw the world change too.

“ _IS HE EVEN ALIVE?! WAS GABBY EVER FUCKING ALIVE AT ALL?!”_

Hands came over his mouth, as if he was the one that had the right to be sick to his stomach.

A long, long silence as her demands quaked the walls and made the ocean flow back and forth, stronger and stronger.

**_So much. Too much. Stop it, stop it, stop it-_ **

His arms suddenly flew around as the outcries of many done wrong filled his ears and eyes and demanded his heart on a stick.

“I NEVER KNEW! I HAVE NO IDEA!!! STOP _MOVING!_ STOP _FIGHTING!_ THERE’S NO USE, IT’LL ONLY GET _WORSE-”_

She wasn’t moving at all, and so a woman already out of her mind with heartbreak after heartbreak.

But he only had to say one thing to bring her back to a fight:

_“I would rather have you trapped here than die!”_

Shaking fists and teary eyes clenched shut, Joey finally screaming back at the world that screamed at him.

Why was he so surprised that it would only return to him yet again, one’s truth traded for another’s?

_“WHY DO YOU GET TO CHOOSE THAT FOR ME?!”_

Francine’s final question echoed- but it wasn’t her voice. Something that could only be described as otherworldly began to burrow into the walls- somehow fill a never-ending cavern like the foghorn at a lighthouse calls for safety to its shores.

**_The demon appears again, right behind Joey._ **

…This lighthouse at the shores of eternity called for **he.**

And something finally broke on the edge of her consciousness.

She remembered the demon.

And all he had done.

**And all he had done was for Joey.**

Francine didn’t look at Joey again. She simply stared at that never-ending smile- that grin of false security as she reached down for the second thing she had kept- had hoped to never use again but had  retained in secret just in case- that would only make things worse.

The ax in her hands swung ahead as she made a dash.

It again went past Joey and aimed for ink.

So much happened at once that her adrenaline hardly allowed for understanding, but it was so haunting, so telling, so important that she couldn’t missed it if she tried.

As the demon held the weapon in one gloved hand, it appeared to put forth effort. Not effort to keep it in place- it was always going to be stronger than she- but it shook, it groaned, it trembled…

… _Much like Joey did by her side._

Of course, it would take a lot to calm yourself down if you saw an ax flying towards your face.

The beast mirrored the agitation of the man he shadowed, a twitchy grip finally- with control- grasped the ax and discarded it to the side and far, far away from her reach.

The demon regained stillness and lost bloodthirsty ways, the core of a man’s soul responding to blows of steadying breath and closed eyes.

But Joey never truly did calm down.

_Never had._

_That’s why this place was like this._

**_The heart of a man is so visibly unstill once one steps inside and allows their deepest desires to reign as king._ **

Joey cracked open eyes to a woman who truly understood now- understood that his heart and soul enveloped her, had watched over her long before they met, without her consent.

And that couldn’t be taken back.

No matter how close he kept her from searching for more.

No matter how much he hid her away from those who wanted her back.

All so much. Too much. Too many strings left to tie before someone tripped over them, too many paths to block before destiny gushed past like a flooding river, too many minds to manipulate in order to keep them from leaving the places Joey deemed them safe to be.

And that’s why the world began to fall apart like it never did before, even worse than it did for his beloved son.

Life’s frail thread snapped in two as a man already with a crack waiting to be broken finally shattered inside out, until the ocean fell and barriers dropped and a man who wished never to be seen like this was seen by all.

The demon could only smile as it did, the trial of Joey Drew beginning as he and his lies became bare to all he had hurt and kept away for so long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it. I'm finally sharing everything with you guys. I've waited since February to do this. I'm breathless. Thank you everyone for being with me as I write this, for giving feedback, art, and even friendship. I love you so much.
> 
> Thank you.


	6. The Illusion of Living

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.”_ – Luke 24:31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meta made me some art inspired by the last chapter!!! Please check it out!
> 
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/180380818608/metallicartist-totally-was-inspired-to-draw-the
> 
> And I got anniversary art from two different people! Thank you June and Stone, it means the world to me!!!!
> 
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/179945256583/thedarkpuddles-pipesflowforeverandever-s  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/179944285803/pipesflowforeverandever-i-have-never-read-hymns
> 
> Thank you once again, my dear friend AceofIntuition, for beta reading! Your help is priceless in making this story everything it can be <3

The world utterly tore apart for, against, and because of Joey Drew. The studio had been a hellscape- an ever twisting, turning labyrinth ensnaring everyone in their own personal slice of perdition and suffering- but never had it been like this, even beyond the turmoil of Henry’s presence soaking into the walls and making them more hostile and deadly than ever seen before.

It had never been Henry himself though that caused that instance of terror. No. It was a reaction to a reaction. Now Joey was reacting once more, the universe carved by his soul becoming something fearsome as serenity failed him and left only woe.

The openness of Francine knowing what he really was left him vulnerable to all, and it only became more and more ghastly as seeing the worst happen made an already scared man completely and utterly mortified to still be standing.

The shore of wood and ink disappeared- but not because either material no longer ceased to be; instead, it remained to create new, treacherous shapes. The invisible threads of magic weaving between the floorboards lifting Joey and Francine above the lapping black had begun to split apart as the force of unsureness made the black ocean slip away.

And away.

And away.

With the loudest, most furious cries of crumbling reality surrounding them, the two spots of color in the studio witnessed the ink around them rumble, rise- threatening to swallow them entirely- and then crash down.

Down deeper than it had been before.

Until the broken edges of the wooden island were bare, jagged edges spiked to kill dripping an onyx liquid.

_Down._

_Down._

_Down._

As Francine watched that drop fall over the edge, realizing that the ocean had not gone away at all, but had simply become an abyss cascading vertically down- no. Not only down. Around! Rising, falling, swirling, _stirring._

She recognized it. This was arising upon the dawn of another form of existing- the kind of existing that briefly enveloped but did not take her when she chased the ink demon and he left her falling through the floorboards. The same living, wet darkness that swelled and bled like a wound with its own mind- she realized- had never left her.

The puddles had always been there, waiting to take her too.

The glittering pit that cut and groaned all around them was distressed, though- something defined by the word bubbling and twisting like ropes melting into each other, far more mobile, far _louder_ than when they encased her last.

_Unsettled._

How incredible it is that this wasn’t the most unsettling detail of all.

It was not only a moat, not only a cavern descending into the depths of watery underworlds. No, as vertically it streamed and swelled forever, horizontally across the plane of reality, a horizon with no end began to have one. The impossible became possible, and nightmares became true.

As the tides pulled in and caved into the core of the earth, with it pulled patchwork realm of a lonely king. The groans of a world imploding all around compelled Francine to clasp over her ears, its shake buckle her knuckles to not fall over- as if it could stop a damn thing.  

The young, cursed intruder had been shaken- traumatized- over and over and over again. If you had stopped to ask her just before she shattered Mr. Drew’s reality, the woman would have informed you that nothing could scare her, not anymore, with an incredulous look slid across her face. But of course!

She had seen death and came right back, leaving both soul and body stuck in the limbo, forced to be unnatural among those whose existence was unnatural too. Slithering black, both their corporal form and the essence of their eternal being- she was surrounded by it. And she had to learn to exist among it, right at the thin line to be close enough to connect- to survive and feel like a human by finding the remnants of life scattered around her- without reaching into the ink and letting it pull her in with a greedy hand, wanting what she had but never able to have it…and thus destroying it forever in the process. A balance upon the unsteady tightrope of empathy maintained as searchers pulled at her ankles, angels pierced with their longing stares, and projectionists nearly ran her off the cliff into the very darkness that waited all around her now. If not for the prophet with his promises of hope for her and humanity inside himself, surely she’d be among those of the swollen, murmuring abyss.

To be horrified was not only normal but the easiest thing to be, and so she had come to accept these nightmares  waiting for her with open arms left empty.

Of course it wasn’t, but not the studio, nor its residents, nor the man and beast ascribed as its god had any idea that the worst imaginable had even more lying in wait to snatch them too.

And indeed, it took them _all._

Like it was Pangea's reformation, the studio was drawn as metallic shreds to the centering magnet of Joey Drew, the walls of the oceanic ballroom closing in. The first time Francine came here in his seclusion, she blinked and felt more suffocated. _This_ shift, however, was blatant. Entire walls splintered board by board, bending and splintering in two like they were nothing more than toothpicks between the fingers of a deity much bigger than anything they’d ever known. As the walls were reeled in with fish wire of stress and unknown wishes, the pipes groaned to hold on until they burst- like it was pulling apart the building bone by bone, vein by vein, bleeding rivers into the pit of the same blood, grabbing a hold of JDS’s spirit by the wrist and tugging it so tight it flesh became crushed with nowhere to go but implosion in a wrathful grasp.

As Francine nearly stumbled to the floor with the rumble of a universe concentrating into one place, Joey felt it too, not only no matter how much he denied it but seemingly because of it. He gasped, yelped, and shrieked, and so fear building upon fear kept his own horrid, deformed creations coming and coming. With each break he could try to steady himself, but the terror personified quickly dug up the shallow graves of hurt feelings. Not even the most practiced, the most experienced of those out of control can hide it any longer from the fate of unsteady grounds and self-aware dismay.

The demon didn’t even flinch as the man who didn’t want to be found was found by all, the walls being broken eventually disintegrating like ashes blown from a palm into the wind.

The puddles have become a gap, the only thing keeping the people he trapped here from crossing into the island of solitude where only Francine and Joey were permitted to be caged.

Of course, the first to find them just screamed.

The projectionist’s cry rang out as the wall he punched at again and again finally burst before him, but not with his own force. It left him as the first to gaze upon the very heart of a lifetime of grieving.

The first time in a very, very long time that Joey Drew saw someone as they, too, saw _him._

And with that break came more, the strike at his carefully managed separateness not only reopening him to be seen but beginning an irreversible crack that carved all around him until everything shattered splinter by splinter in wood, metal and ink; each beat of his pulse was the orchestra’s director of a blaring symphony of madness, destruction, and the formation of something that he yet again did not want to see as the noises of new structures birthing from old rang so loud that Francine could feel it ripple through her skin.

Among the sounds of deep, massive death…a different one. A cry- a noise not unholy like the rest of them but still so unnerving because of how totally other it was. It stole Joey’s breath as he put a hand to his face, and Francine pivoted to face something that she would never wish upon anyone else, especially after experiencing it herself.

Sammy grabbed Alice by the wrist before she could trip into the puddles, the angel never before feeling as vulnerable as she was now, upper body dangling above the thing she hated most as nothing but unsteady heels and the slimy grip of a prophet keeping her from becoming one with the fishbowl of lost souls.

Thank the lord that the preacher staggered her back and away from the cut edge of their serrated piece of the world; surely he would have let her go if the dumbness, numbness of the sight not down but straight ahead had caught his eye and left him at the mercy of all the gravity in the world falling upon his shoulders.

It forced him to his knees as he saw the center of the universe.

It smoothed his hands till limp, ones so ready to hold grab and never let go now unable to do anything at all as Francine met his eyes- the woman not dead nor ink nor ascended to heaven.

It dropped his jaw until it showed teeth as he who bestowed that which gave him sight stood tall behind her, the god of his psalms smiling still as his shadow fell upon the earth and absorbed it, lightly clenched claws seeming to pull all of existence into a single room.

And finally, it shook every millimeter of his body from the surface of inky soma until it swam its way to an inky heart, filling him with something unspeakable that forced the black he was sculpted from to seep out and out, over the brim of his pants, down the length of his arms to trembling fingertips, from his skull and to the floor drop by drop by drop…

…As he saw hair of red, a bowtie of blue, and eyes of yellow stare back.

And then this…this _human_ said his name, the human man gaping, a hand to his heart and one reaching out and then recoiling just as soon, fear and love at once from Joey for the man that knew who he was all along.

“S-” this unfeasible old man stuttered, whole expression shaken, “Sammy…”

If it was relief Joey looked for as he searched painted eyes, that is not what divinities would bestow within the prophet’s reply.

A mask barely tied over his head now rested askew, threatening to fall off thanks to the turmoil of being thrown around like a toy soldier in a lifted dollhouse, but he didn’t move to adjust it. Nothing could bring his body to move, nothing could bring his lips to speak as the prophet finally saw the truth he had forced himself to live for without ever seeing it for himself, and it being nothing at all that he expected it to be.

A hand rose and pointed, weakly, slowly- ink falling down upon his legs.

Joey waited- waited for something, _anything-_

_“…No.”_

The musician stayed still in place as he could barely talk back to an impossible, wicked idea.

“He must- he must- my lord must…have-…”

Joey exhaled as Sammy was soon found to speak only to himself, not yet sure to be relieved or mortified.

 _“…My lord must have his reasons…!”_ he begged, trying to puzzle together pieces that wouldn’t fit without becoming something completely of heathens _. “My lord must have done this…for…for…!”_

The man ahead quickly found something to grab onto in that little lifeline, the end of a ball of yarn quickly unraveling. “Now Sammy, Sammy you are _right,”_ he swiftly assured with a kind, soft voice, “There’s a reason for all of this- a reason why you are _here,_ a reason why-”

But any chance of him finishing that plea was dashed away, and the sight of the preacher melting away not just in body and mind but to the bottom of his heart made a woman so afraid to be alone again, to be without him again, forced unable to hold her friend as he within sight but out of reach when needed someone most.

She recognized the deception evaporating before him just as it did for she, blowing away the blinds of clouds underneath until all there was left to do is plummet down from the sky. He who stood strong to show her to be the same- he who kept her from falling apart was now falling apart himself.

Joey gave a small but such _panicked_ screech as a paternal hand beginning to be outstretched for Sammy found use for another child, grabbing his prisoner’s arm just in time to keep her from mindlessly trying to run near the beach of an island with not a shore but a pit- a pit that reacted with such fierceness to the frights in Joey’s head that the cartoonist was afraid it’d rupture under her feet.

Indeed, his mouth frowned in a way he had never known, hearing creaks even where they stood as his muscles strained more and more with each “Let go of me!” and “Sammy! _Sammy!!!”_ that opposed him until flailing arms and anchored legs gave way to complete desolation, deep and hearty sobs eventually the only sound left as she became too exhausted to fight anymore; Francine had lost her family and in a way, she was losing Sammy too, and that was too much. The woman did nothing but shut her eyes as her very best friend felt the first wave of dread, a warning of everything he had fought so hard to keep at bay coming with more power than ever before to drive his soul into despair. Would she ever be able to even touch him again? She didn’t know, and so all she had was gone.

As Francine cried her friend’s name once more across the distance- she barely not falling to her knees, too, if only for her prophet’s sake- Joey was left with wide eyes and quivering hands as he saw the healing beliefs that took Sammy so long to build and preserve screech in its release, heard by all who heard Sammy try to assure and comfort with his prayer:

“INK DEMON!” Sammy shouted to his master, “INK DEMON, TELL US- TELL YOUR PROPHET! TELL YOUR BELIEVERS- _FRANCINE!_ WHAT IS BEING DONE HERE?! WHAT ARE YOU ASKING OF US?!”

Demands either unheard or ignored, the demon not even turning to look at him.

…But Joey was already looking his way-

_“NO!”_

His mask nearly slipped off with vigorous shakes of his head, splattering drops of his flesh onto his paper-toned pants and the crooked floor. Some even went so far as to descend to the puddles below, shiny dots becoming a part of the adrift masses again.

Indeed, a man of ink and one of light and metal weren’t the only ones that came to show him what he had done. There were searchers, rising from their thin, wet pools as not only was the solid world became too unstill to remain in but the liquid realm seemed to quake too, moaning and grunting their confused, pained calls as they no longer had refuge in either state of being. They dragged themselves by hands and elbows to the edge- like crowds in an encircling arena looking over a battlefield for a missing girl and a gentleman confined with a ravenous beast- as the butcher gang and their clones tottered and splashed in the searchers’ paths, twittering in their broken, animalistic voices questions of what this may mean…

…Maybe of if this before them was what it meant to be set free.

Staring. Staring. Staring. Staring. All eyes on Joey, all eyes seeing him for who he was- everything he never wanted. It quickened the studio owner’s breath and made his fingers curl as anxiety crept up them and into his bones, twitching blinks from him that tried but could not match every gaze that rested upon him. As soon as he saw one searcher- one butcher- his heart would grow faint and fling itself to the next, and it happened over and over until he realized inch by inch that _these_ were how many lives he took forever.

These were how many faces that were no their own with him to blame.

But it mattered most to someone who he saw last, the one who built her own face.

Alice, the one who remembered, finally recomposed, numb to the sight of Sammy Lawrence’s religion dying at her feet. She was one who even if she refused her name, still knew it. The one that could still feel in her fingertips everything he lost, and everything she would never have again.

The rips of flesh hardly holding the left side of her face together strained upon more to keep a jaw from falling to the floor. Broken lips trembled. Clenched fists shook.

 _“Joey,”_ she whispered, and even across the vast nothingness, the man to whom that word belonged felt it slink down his spine like a raindrop down a windowpane.

But of course.

No one but Henry and Francine had said his name in an entire lifetime. The sting of that loneliness morphing into something even worse was just inevitable.

And as Joey slowly turned his gape to her, horrified at what was before him, the things she lost came back, wave after wave, pulse after pulse- visions of smiles, of songs, of promises.

Of turned backs, harsh looks, and arcane words muttered in secret.

Unlike Francine, she didn’t even need to see any undeniable mirroring between he and the demon to confirm that after all these years, the one who dragged them to hell fell down right along with them.

And the sight of him being…being… _the same-!_

Francine, hands on her thighs, finally pried her focus a few mere degrees from one friend to the other, just in time to see her fall apart too.

“…Susie…!” A soft exclamation from the dandy in white stained with death gasped near Francine’s side, almost as if even after all this time knowing who Alice became and what she was, the young voice actress never left her at all. “Susie, _darling,_ it’s been so long-!”

_“JOEY!!!!”_

…Well that just wouldn’t do.

She knew- she knew she saw him a long, long time ago- blamed it as madness from first emerging from the puddles. Her face twisted with how naïve she’d always been.

“So! It’s been you all along!” she called, “I suppose I already knew that you started this but…continuing it?? Hiding?!?! God! GOD!!!” she screamed, throwing her hands to her hair, halo bouncing as she turned about every which way in disbelief. The other beings in the mismatched chamber peered past the holes in patchwork walls and across the living, breathing gap to watch her distress in curiosity. The angel had always been angry, but never… _out of control._

Oil-stained glasses felt their shine shift over them, short, awkward grunts of words beginning but not finishing playing with the back of Joey’s throat as a girl he had watched over for so long, so endearingly with so many expectations didn’t greet him like an old friend.

_But of course she wouldn’t. Not when she remembered it was him that made it necessary to change expectations in the first place._

“Susie, my dear darling angel-!” he gasped, mouth open with a small shake of the head in disbelief. But whatever he had to say to her condemnation, it was snapped back shut with lips closed tight with the sensation of sickness. No, nothing he could tell her could console, not anymore.

She had grown up so much since he last used words to coax her into childish complacency.

“NO!” a woman who made herself anew screeched, hands to her head and knees buckling together, “DON’T CALL ME THAT! _I’M NOT SUSIE,_ _AND I_ MADE MYSELF AN _AN_ GEL _, NOT YOU- NOT Y_ OU- N _OT! YOU!”_ And the last denial was so enormous that it made everyone in the studio question if it was she who said it or something in the air, all around and begging for them to believe what it said. _“I’_ M AL _ICE_ AN _GEL!!!”_

Such a force came as the woman stolen of her colors literally looked at the very thing that took away her humanity, the same man that she once struggled so hard to please. No wonder her voice split back and forth, like a ping pong ball tossed around; it was certainly how her emotions were played with.

Meanwhile, as Sammy didn’t even react, too busy as he tried to surround himself with a gospel of dismay to avoid the little he had left crumble away-

“No, that doesn’t make sense- a person- a human- Joey? _Joey-_ _Who-?_ How _could_ he-? _He can’t!”_

 -He didn’t hear the cavern changing…

…Responding.

…Hollowing.

_…Understanding._

Different sounds than before from the swirling souls upset in their profane waterfalls.

Brow curling and sticky hair clinging to the sides of her face as it moved back and forth to investigate the ungodly, Francine gave a small moan of grave concern at this changing tone of a thousandfold meeting their maker. Alice, however, didn’t pay attention to what made the other woman distraught but rather finally realized with her troubled voice there wasn’t one human being before the angel but _two._ Thus, her voice became quieter, but the sirens that somehow blared with her eye instead still shot across the room for all to hear and be greatly, greatly alarmed. Please God, _no._ But what else was left to wonder?

_“…What are you going to do with her?”_

And with that, everyone- every searcher, every cartoon, even the projectionist and even the maestro clutching and clawing at his own skull for answers he couldn’t yet find- focused on the man who twitched every which way at all the eyes upon him. They were waiting for an answer.

Francine was too, tears trailing her cheeks as she stood not even a meter away.

Each corner of the studio was pulled to one spot to witness the master of their sins, and yet **he merely stood,** demon lingering in his shadow. As if it was they that cornered him and not he all along, his shoulders rose and fell as a person hidden for eighty years by his own distress and cowardice was hidden no more.

After all this time, the girl still pure flesh was at his altar, and all waited with baited breath to know if this was a sacrifice for her as a goddess reigning above death or if she was simply lamb to the slaughter, yet more blood to be shed in front of the rest to remind them this was **his** world, and **his** hand that controls every thread that sews in and out, in and out until everyone is connected to the slightest flick of his fingertips…

…If she was his treasure now to a dragon hoarding gold or an anomaly to be put to her place by a righteous judge.

And none of this being what Joey wanted, all he could do was let a gloss wash over the honey in his eyes and let dust of the unspoken come from his mouth in place of a voice. He knew he had done wrong, but never been confronted with being so wrong that others who saw would inquire with baited breath whether or not he felt this woman he began to love like a daughter deserved to die simply for being alive.

But he had brought Sammy to his knees.

He had brought Alice to scream.

The projectionist to swing fists.

The puddles to quake.

And he had brought tears to that very girl’s eyes.

So why wouldn’t he be the villain, the one who allowed the reflection of his deepest desires become a god, a lord to roam among the murk and ensure no one was out of place, no one questioned the right of the ink demon over the souls that Joey regretted to have stolen away but kept all the same?

The dark king, the warped ruler, the antagonist of a story no one had lived to ever tell- all he could do was look to the demon, the creature still unmoving, and then to Francine, freezing in place so shortly after straightening herself up. His lips were parted, sure he could say something to acquit himself of these sins, but as such an excuse refused to exist in the first place, amber irises flicked back and forth while searching hers.

A rock fell in her stomach as she recognized this gape as one begging her to defend this man against those accusing him of wanting the woman dead just like them; he was asking the only person not yet engulfed by his selfish curse that even after doing it over and over, somehow it wouldn’t happen again.

And what could she say to that?

As the passing of time made it known he was truly alone among crowds and crowds of people he cared for, his jaw gradually clenched and a swallow ran down his neck. And then with none to exonerate him, at the father’s pathetic silence, Alice shouted once more. Decade upon decade, right at him as all the control she had wrestled for slipped out of her hands.

“COME NOW!” A wretched sort of grin stretched across her face as her arms stretched wide and left her open to any justification, any insanity that’d explain the immeasurable, irremediable horrors he’d let ravage their corpses and spirits until they were completely unrecognizable. “THERE MUST BE _SOMETHING!_ What did you plan!? What have you planned for all of us?!”

Her arms side to side with these words then gestured all around at the crowd brought to Joey, every last person under his thumb. At their inclusion, they began to stir, murmurs of people nearly animals still grasping somewhere in their minds that this had to do with them and what they had been driven to be for far too long. Norman- limbs outstretch too side to side but not in gesture but to fight- had his light flicker as the blurred last feet of its reaches barely touched Francine’s skin across the little left of his floor, then the abyss, and then past Joey’s nose.

The most terrifying thing in the world had brought Alice to feel nothing about it- nothing at all. All that was left for her was to question it- just as Sammy was now questioning it, just as Francine, just as anyone still with enough sense did.

_Why Joey?_

_Why?_

Francine witnessed his eyes skew shut and hands throw over his ears, as if he could shut it all out. But of course a curse designed to make him see and hear all wouldn’t allow him to miss the heartbreak right in front of him.

“I didn’t! I’m not-…” A breath forced its way between teeth, a sickly, nearly sobbing sound as it took more composure than most anyone could have to try to verbalize feelings unspeakable. “You must understand, my girl- I’m not- I’m not doing anything to try to hurt you! You can’t comprehend all it’s taken for me to keep you safe-!”

“SURELY!” the woman emboldened called again interrupted, “But surely there is a…a REASON!” Like a prosecutor in a courtroom, she paced back and forth as one eye so far away managed to send a chill down Joey’s back, Susie Campbell murdered in cold blood and him with blood found on his hands. The defense of the demon meant nothing to her now.

_Nothing meant anything anymore._

“You didn’t hurt us?!” she scoffed, “You have the GALL to EXIST and tell us that _YOU DIDN’T HURT ANYONE?!_ That you KEPT US _SAFE?!”_ Her expression became so malevolent, so distorted with revulsion that her sneer was almost unrecognizable. “YOU KILLED US ALL!!!”

A gasp, flying like cold wind to his tonsils and one hand rising with the quickness of lightning to cover his lips from releasing either vomit or words even worse.

“Joey…” Francine choked, marveling too.

Because the man before her, short and dainty, frilled at the sleeves and fringed with hair near his cheeks…

Rosy in the face and soft in the eyes…

One hand scarred for love and another that had drawn dreams…

This was the killer of not just Susie but the all in the room except Francine, and they were all waiting to see if he would kill her too. That revelation was enough to either let the woman fall feeble or to do as she had always done. Yes, even as something beyond what was considered beyond the most a human being was intended to struggle through, Francine was reduced only to what she had always been:

Brave enough to look in the face what had took everything from everyone, even if maybe she was next. She had to know. She had to know why- _why do this?_ What would drive someone who seemed at one point to be so genuine, so kind, to _do this…?!_

“Joey…?”

And maybe it was more to himself. Maybe it was to his victims. Maybe it was even to Francine, but as she adjusted herself to look at him in the face- making herself in his line of sight, she saw blank eyes wide with reflections of all his transgressions and trembling lips heavy with awful veracities whisper:

_“Am I your murderer?”_

And so simply, Joey forced a girl still able to breathe to ponder if he was.

With clear pearls in the corners of her eyelids, it came upon Francine in the horrible quiet of shock that followed and made her step back that an answer to that was not to be found, instead feeling in her chest that was being pried inside out as he asked this, as if to him it wasn’t his choice if this was the truth but _hers._

Or maybe as if Joey had stabbed her in the heart and placed her hand upon his, that gripped the handle of a knife and let the beautiful reds she brought with her from above bleed onto their hands.

She didn’t have time to decide if this was even for her at all, indeed, as everyone answered Joey in brutal, suffering unison. A sharp intake of air filled his lungs with eyes somehow stretching wider, magic of things good and evil glittering like it did in the ink. His own atrocities came from the deformed tongues of his victims and forced him to take in each and every lie and all the misery that came with it down his throat.

“ _WHAT IS IT?!”_ Alice shrieked, horns gleaming as she pulled her arms back and threw her voice as far into his head that she could. All it did was make him clench his hands a bit more, his empty gaze just a bit wider as he saw his entire world and how much it hated him. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO US?! _WHY?!”_

It was then, with the torn woman’s anguish echoing through a room to match splintered, hurt feelings that Norman, the man formerly the angel’s mentor, either in response to her distress or with the formation of his own, made his light wide and bright as shoulders threw back and that speaker in his chest crackled so loud, roared with such might, that like a lion he brought the call of every other creature one by one, reverberating until every soul finally, finally spoke their sorrow at the man who caused it to seed and consume them all.

Dominoes cascading, Francine’s head twisted as she heard noise sweep across the room like a wave encircling them. Every searcher began to moan past the muting cover of ever-falling jaws. Pipers groaned, Strikers hissed, and Fishers gurgled, flinging their swinging heads and handless arms and chattering teeth inside skulls with complete and utter upset.

And then the _puddles._

Like fire rising from hell, the murmurs of dripping souls enveloping their island began to get louder…and louder… _and louder._

Sammy maybe failed to pull them out of their one-track hivemind when he was among them, sent there by the demon to prevent Henry’s sacrifice, but Joey brought them back.

And they were cursing his name.

_JOEY_

_JOEY_

_JOEY_

And beneath it all- Alice and searchers and Norman and toons-

Soon, something else was the hardest for him to hear.

_“No…”_

Joey gasped once more, pivoting where he stood, knowing this denial from Sammy was fundamentally different.

“No!”

As the ink man raised his chin from the floor till it was level with the one in a top hat, Joey felt it. It was already shaping his lips, already trembling clenched hands. Sammy was slipping.

“No- no no _no NO_ _NO NO-!!!”_

And then Joey accidentally sealed the fate of Sammy’s belief. Hearing the young man pain, to hear him surely, surely in pain-

Mr. Drew in his great practice of containing terrible things still couldn’t keep the core of his soul from reacting to such visceral anguish and grief for a lad he had wanted to blind from the horrors of this life.

To see your most loyal, most faithful disciple doubt would make any god weak in the vision of their flock, and as seer stared at him Joey couldn’t hold back the same secret he failed to keep from Francine.

His skin crawled as he saw the personification of his soul shift in his peripheral against his will, oil smearing the corner of his sight like looming sin.

That was when illusion disappeared forever.

Sammy saw the ink demon clench his fists and straighten his back the same time as Joey did, something so simple that it fragmented eighty years until prayer, hope, and hymn swirled around Sammy like an aura, a man being broken so far that he went to his most basic state of faith and murmured all that had carried him day after day, moment after moment to make torture worth its while.

The demon’s changing stance may have been done in reaction to calm Joey down, but it was a flinch of foolishness, a gamble that stirred something so deep inside Mr. Lawrence that once more, he would never be the same.

A lifetime of devotion increasing in volume until it went from a mumble, to a whisper, to words, to a shout so loud as to hope to drown out everything else telling him.

“Sammy,” his former employer quaked to see him, “Sammy, please-!“ Such a weak appeal, high in pitch and rough with trepidation for things irreversible. “Please, son, I can explain-!” That desperate reach of Drew’s dared to come out again, even if it couldn’t touch; a hope against hope that if Sammy was remembering him- if Sammy was realizing, too who the demon really was- that he would also find the old man with a warm smile that only wanted the best for him.

To hear the sobs of a man that trusted his god- unwittingly trusted _him._ That prayed, _“my lord, my god, my master, ink demon, INK DEMON, INK DEMON-!!!”_ That hymn that sung to keep him safe. Keep him stable. Keep him alive. It was prayed again now in the most terrible way, a man already broken breaking inside out all over again.

And that meditation was eaten up by the shouting of this world’s god’s true name.

Not thanking him for trying so hard for their sake.

Not commending him for doing all he could.

Not blessing him for doing everything a good father should.

It was damnation from the damned, calls from the netherworld insisting that he deserved even worse for what he did.

That was what released the floods of a man that had jammed fingers into a leaking dam, lest the rivers of fate lead where they never should.

But then, by his side- soft murmurs of distress- then it was _her._

The woman that gave him her hope.

Gave him her light.

Her smile-

Happiness-!

_Faith-!_

Seeing she who had raised him to great heights of belief that maybe things could get better, maybe they could be set free- why, for her to look upon Mr. Drew now and leave him wondering if he had stolen every last innocence away that he came to see as their salvation?

His saving grace now returned his hurt- his weighted shoulders, heavy breath, and palms clasped over his heart-…only with her own as she waited for some reasoning he couldn’t even comprehend himself.

And how awful it was to realize that her pain was so great thanks to him.

And as Francine uttered his name once more to end the silence of their locked eyes, guessing that maybe- just maybe- there was something he could say to all this, that was the last straw, and she saw the demon react before he did, a horrid screech from his closed teeth in agony. A tormentor desperate to convey his own torture snapped, and his outrage rose to the ceiling and submerged his universe no longer with tender love but his most appalling possessiveness.

It was all that was left to him, left to his devices to contain what was becoming more out of his grasp by the second.

“YOU ARE ALL _CHILDREN!_ I KNOW BETTER THAN YOU ALL!!! YOU _CAN’T_ UNDERSTAND! YOU CAN’T _COMPREHEND_ EVERYTHING THAT I’VE DONE FOR YOU! _I AM AT FAULT, BUT I AM FAULTLESS!_ THIS MAY HAVE BEEN BECAUSE OF ME, BUT I HAVE DONE EVERYTHING- _EVERYTHING_ I CAN TO HELP YOU! THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE THAT COULD HAVE BEEN DONE- _DON’T YOU SEE? DON’T YOU SEE?!?!”_

One last scream against the world that screamed at him, as they refused to listen, as they refused to comply. His brow furrowed and his frown cut across a face once known for smiles, and a voice once best at laughter now thundered with the demands of someone unwavering in a war against himself.

**_“ENOUGH!!!”_ **

And the expressionless god finally moved once more, raising his hands far up in command of his Joey’s words come true- the man’s voice a pen that drew heaven’s wrath and let it soak through the studio itself. **His** **aura flooded the walls, cracking them open even more,** and with a swipe of Joey’s arms, everything was pushed back as **black** consumed him and the world was violently discarded not towards its monarch this time but away, deep and far into the chaos of his suffering mind where he could never be found and reminded of guilt again.

Francine was the last to see him, a glimpse of golden eyes that gleamed with rage soon becoming filled with sharp, sharp regret as he reached out his arm one final time to the woman far too long after his heart was closed off for good, a hand swiping just short of the nothingness that separated them.

As she flew back and saw his figure become covered by the splattering shade of the ink demon, the wanderer he held so dear couldn’t say if it was he that was gone or she.


	7. Dearly Coveted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“But this is a people plundered and despoiled; All of them are trapped in caves, Or are hidden away in prisons; They have become a prey with none to deliver them, And a spoil, with none to say, ‘Give them back!’"_ \- Isaiah 42:22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY! I know it's been a long time. I have a bit of writer's block along with being very busy with holidays and school. I still plan on finishing this fic fair n square. Meantime, here's some awesome art I got from lovely, lovely people!
> 
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/180526226018/crowsketches-i-just-got-done-reading-tides-of  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/180755264978/metallicartist-we-can-only-hold-on-to-hope-for  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/181107526493/lady-lampblack-hello-yes-i-am-deeply-in-love  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/181516031983/a-hymns-of-struggle-oneshot  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/181686042078/startistdoodles-more-christmas-gifts-for  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/181049802363/startistdoodles-heres-what-i-made-at-last
> 
> OH There's a specific AU AceofIntuition and I made where their Joey is the Joey of the Hymns universe! He's a bastard with a haunted house and Francine is stuck helping him be entertained. Here's that:
> 
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/180939763968/aceofintuition-last-night-i-introduced-an-au  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/181002241883/aceofintuition-more-wcsnow-expect-much  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/180940334618/au-winter-carols
> 
> And of course, lots of love and a great big shoutout to the best beta reader, AceofIntuition <3

What does it mean to care for what you love?

Well, something in Joey decided that it was to lock it away, deep where no one can hurt it again. Hopefully, not even him.

 _Especially_ not him. Men aren’t supposed to be gods.

_And only God knew what was next._

 

* * *

 

 

Francine felt her jaw clench shut with not a force her own but by that of impact. Unnatural wind ripped through her hair until it stung the sides of her face, the dried ink left unwashed clumping strands together and creating tiny whips that left its bitter taste- the same horridly familiar taste as when Bendy revived her- upon the corners of her lips.

And then in flashes of darkness:

_Whap._

_Dink!_

_THUD_.

The sounds of someone crashing back first into something that was unsuitable to soften such blows. She could have debated, however, that maybe nothing- not a mattress, not pillows, not even a bed of the most delicate flowers- could have made such ungodly power ease its clouts. After all, for a grown woman- a woman of generous weight, no less- to be carried away from one existence to another like a paper crossing the road with an afternoon’s breeze? Perhaps only magic could explain.

And as her skull rattled, she remembered once more that unlike those of the studio with such magic to their name, she had none.

It was indistinguishable how long she stayed down, up, or sideways as all sense of gravity left along with any trust in Joey Drew. Why would she want to open her eyes? Her family was gone. The world she tried to know was something she nor anyone subjected to it had never really known- maybe could never know at all. And the father that adored a daughter was now burned in her mind in the worst way, morphing from someone who acted out of selfless love into someone that acted out of possessiveness. His image was somehow still the same while it warped beyond recognition- much like how he never changed at all to turn out so horrid.

Eyes with the soft light of kindness began to gleam with the gold of a miser. A smile stretched sweet like taffy then as sinister as the one upon below the demon’s horns, slathered and dripping with blood and ink.

And those hands.

Those _fucking_ hands.

She let them touch her…put his fingers under her chin like a _dog._ Covered her eyes so she couldn’t _see._ Held her hands not to comfort but to never let her go. But she had trusted them, because they were gentle…warm… _human-!_

Maybe they weren’t human hands at all to bind such a spell because look and see where they had led her now. More alone than ever in her whole damn life.

…Or so she thought, up until something gripped her wrist.

And just as the day they met, Francine screamed with the most primal fear and twisted up to see black grip onto her skin. A man with a scratched, wooden face and an unmoving smile met her gaze, and this too meant something different after this sick, macabre excuse of a fairy tale.

As Sammy and Francine looked at each other yet again as she scurried to sit up and lean her palms against loose paper atop wood floors, maybe it didn’t mean anything to have learned a moral in the end of this. Friendship, kindness, empathy…she had given it. She had _learned it,_ and she had _earned it._ And so did he- the broken man gasping as her brief shouts at him faded away, again hurt somewhere in his soul that she had reacted to him as a horror rather than someone intending- _truly_ intending- to help.

The two friends- one new to this world and one very, very old- felt an eternity of fables snap in the air and melt away. Thanks to Joey, every single step in journeys short and long that crossed paths now meant nothing.

Because nothing could be what this was, and nothing was what they could do as the emptiness, hopeless, and utter deprivation of meaning swirled with the remnants of panic and revelations.

All that was left wherever the two found themselves- amid darkness thick over secrets but empty with their forced reveal- was each other. And so, with neither knowing what this life was intended to be at all let alone in the future, all they could do in the now was take in each other as the sole presence, the last essence of anything left.

One candle sat by them, lit.

A soft glow made Sammy’s black skin shine yellow, betrayed the little shakes in his shoulders, stunted breaths, and the desperate grip of his knuckles as the fire showed Francine yet again how human he was- human he’d never be again thanks to someone that at one time they both had trusted.

Having met in the middle, the two upon their knees then held each other, praying to whatever cruelty controlled them that it wouldn’t take the other too. It wasn’t the puddles- not death, nor bodilessness, nor a succumbing to the ink- but it might as well have been, because just as Sammy promised himself over and over, it was his duty to stay no matter what his lord demanded of him.

And now, it was clear, also in spite of him.

Touches that meant everything to people who lost it all yet again, unsure even if another hug was worth it as her gasps filled the black space with hurt, as Sammy silently felt faith slip out of his heart and leaving him empty of everything except what he could keep in his arms.

The candle was taken, grip only gentle with weariness, and the flame was carried in gloved hands to light the dry wick of a second.

The grim fuzz of light crawled across the shape of Alice’s knees as she gripped them to her chest, putting the candle to the floor and fixating her single eye on it; maybe it was only set aflame as a distraction, not for sight. Her stare- wide, vacant, wild. To describe her mind and emotions would be impossible just as it was for the two embracing in front of her, as it was a betrayal of something even beyond life and death itself that an omniscient narrator couldn’t even begin to understand.

But it only took one look at her face to feel it, instead.

“Joey,” she whispered, all she could recognize even after everything she had done to put Francine first. “Joey,” she hissed again, voice shaking almost as if she loved him like a father yet again. It made Francine raise her head, and it made a man that didn’t even remember Joey curl his fingers tighter, afraid he would take her away again.

And as Alice continued her muttering- “perfection,” “how could you,” “how could _I,”_ “I’m Alice, I’m Alice, I’m Alice”- the hum of magic, curses, or both drummed all around without the sight of any walls. Francine peered over Sammy’s melting shoulder, biting her lips because god she’d be sick if she let that bastard take another sob out of her, and she let the space enter her soul, eyes shifting here and there around the few shapes in her peripheral thanks to friends in suffering.

Black.

Black.

**Black-**

And as she searched for something to be there, something came.

A third candle lit, Sammy holding tighter with one arm briefly as he reached for the first stack of wax and tilted it into a third, so supernatural in a place where the candles often lit themselves.

Even with complete nothingness being there before, the change from nothing to something was hard to notice through the blur of tears, budding at the corners of her eyes and threatening to burst. As she moved her arm to wipe it away, the man restraining her first gave forceful resistance…and then seemed to slink into limpness. She gave it mind briefly, hearing his wet palms slap the floor and merely make shadow glossy with similarly colored ink, but the apparition ahead was hard to ignore.

This flame sat peacefully, almost as a memoriam on a desk-

Her stomach twisted into a knot.

-The same desk where Mr. Drew sat her down and just like a fae, asked her for her name and everything that came with it. The radiance itself almost seemed to create within the bounds of its light, because where there was the infinite now sat the familiar.

She only looked away so long, but it was enough to spot a dull, cream-colored smudge a ways away, one last candle. The christening fire was taking in her hands, wax cooling just enough to pool near her hands but dry there rather than burn.

She stood up, shuffling papers under her backstepping shoes in shifting weight.

The fourth candle was lit, the first gently set next to it.

The woman rose her head and looked back from where she walked from, noticing again not only the desk but what was behind it as she came to a thin table and tilted. What was there left her no idea what to think.

No idea how to feel about the fact that the shelves of her room and all the intimacies she had left of home had either followed her here or were delicately set down.

Didn’t have time to, it turned out, as a shout rang out and a crash quickly followed.

Now that boundaries of the room were completed, an empty picture that frame next to a closed, ornate door fell victim to the smile that used to be within it. The glass that held nothing but dust now cracked as Sammy’s mask was discarded, a pathetic, blindly delighted expression as scarred and faded as the man it was made to manipulate. So many more of it stared back. It weighed upon his shoulders until the man that had only just stood up and abandoned it once and for all could feel the guise of his master coming back. The drawings Joey showed Francine of how so many children thanked him for his care were now witnesses to the worst sin of all, and Sammy could only fall back to his knees and cover the remnants of his face. Even a blind man knows when to be afraid of what he’s seen.

The maskless prophet curled into a self now vacant of whatever he used to have, a form he gave to his god with a purpose no more, and there was nothing Francine could say to that. To the person who was so strong for her, who held ground with faith to anchor them in the ocean’s storm. Now that was gone with nothing left to believe in its place.

And then it was the room. How all that was important including her own flesh and blood was discarded not even into the trash but something beyond- something where things that knew love could never be loved this far away from home. How it tried to carve the heart out of her, display it on the shelf like another item that belonged to Joey Drew. How yet again, it would never be the same, but this time…it had managed to get past her wall of determination, empathy, and self-assurance. Joey Drew was a storyteller, and those words of his wove her downfall. The claws of his horror story’s finale dug in deep and slashed away and away the sense of who she was, the sense of how this was supposed to be.

It was supposed to be about learning you don’t have to be alone.

About accepting yourself even if you aren’t what you want to be.

About becoming friends.

And most of all, it was supposed to be about convincing a god to let his people go.

But their god told her loud and clear he’d never do that, in his demented mind that for whatever reason found this hell acceptable, Joey would not tolerate being alone even if it meant he’d end up being the loneliest of all.

She turned her head when he couldn’t stand the sight of him anymore, Sammy cursing the entity he once found beloved, a savior to release him now the devil dragging him down by the ankles; and he always had been…he always had been…

The poster of that little boy looked over her like an angel- his perfect dark curls, his brown skin and sparkling eyes. _“I’ll wait for you,”_ she used to think, _“I’ll wait for you to come home if it means you’re still just fine.”_

And now if he was okay- if maybe the redheaded bastard’s lie ended up being true anyway- that’s what Gabby would think of _her._ Joey allowed her to believe- to have a bubble of another reality where she was a hero that would make her way home when really, when she should have been wondering when the dream would stop and she would finally die.

And so, in the audience of two people justified in their own isolated suffering, and of all the things both hers and not hers meant to be coveted forever, she just took these thoughts and broke down and cried.

That was enough, though. It took a while- it took many breaths from inky, choking lips underneath eyes that never wanted to see anything ever again, but eventually each guttural cry subsided more and more with each breath; the clawing of his own face tugged dents into his cheeks that crawled down from under shallow, empty sockets down to a jaw that almost seemed to shed black tears to his clothes and the floor. After uncovering where eyes should have been, Sammy in his blindness began to see in the cloud of his agony the colors of something left to his accursed name.

The man stumbled until he could hear sounds of fresh wounds right in front of him, nearly stepping on her toes as shaking shoulders rose with hesitation and arms bent to whatever position was supposed to make this one thing alright again. Oily lips parted, a bead of his liquid body stuck between them to partially cover back up an open mouth, but it soon snapped in two as he broke silence in order to comfort her.

…In order to console the last piece of himself to clutch onto belief. It was both a selfless and a very selfish need- to hand onto this as rage and agony tried to pull his mind back down to hell, the very place he spent every minute praying to keep at bay.

Maybe his faith in his master was gone, but the only way he could exist was to have faith in something. And so the bitterness remained but did so in his unsure, frantic kindness- fleeing headfirst into a snowstorm knowing behind there were wolves of his own regret prowling and closing in.

“Francine,” he nearly gargled her name, tongue itself seeming to melt into his throat too as Sammy kept himself from falling apart, “Francine.”

He couldn’t see her hands in front of her own face now, but for her not to stop her own lament in order to hear another’s was striking enough to slap him across the cheek. It was only thanks to weariness that he held on, that the prophet hurt in a way that made him want to help rather than blame himself for how she was.

“Francine, please-!” His elbows bent without his approval Where were these godforsaken hands supposed to go? “I-” Those thin, black masses he called fingers finally stopped hovering at an invisible, pristine aura around her shoulders and sunk stains into a light blue shirt. His first hug was instinctive, one meant to snatch her away if anything dared to come for her again; to do so again not in protection but in comfort was different entirely to him. “I need you-” Needed her to what? He didn’t know. Perhaps he simply needed her; that wouldn’t have been untrue. Memory of the last time he chose to slip of his mask came forward, Sammy awkwardly trying to mimic the kind of touches she gave to assure him then.

“Please,” he begged without knowing what for, hands coming off so one may pause before putting his palm over one set of knuckles covering her wet eyes and so another could reach around her back and feel gags of sadness press her spine into his fingertips with every lurch that came with sobs.

She wasn’t stopping. She had to, though. She had to or else he’d rot further into this abyss the lord left them in.

The man learning once again to love a friend looked back once more to the examples given to him, and he saw that with every sorrow he had succeeded at pushing back just a bit more, she had returned it with a smile.

If Alice saw the series of expressions that came across him at this perplexity, she certainly didn’t feel the need to comment; he was left alone with his racing thoughts and the person whose enjoyment in their horrid life helped him break an unspoken promise to Bendy to treat it as a life not worth happiness.

At first, the obvious; her grasp was pried off her face and onyx thumbs found the corners of the woman’s lips. He didn’t try to force them to rise up, though; a smile is so much more than the direction your mouth is turned. A look of desperate relief in hopes his touch was enough soon became panic, his brow sharply rising as he only heard her cry even louder.

Something else- something else-

He remembered them at the piano, her soft appreciation and budding pride as he laid a melody across its keys.

A nod to himself- almost as if giving himself permission to go ahead- before he swallowed back cries of his own to somewhere deep in his chest for another time, and he bent himself forward in such a way that the stray hairs atop her head became stuck to his forehead; still holding her face, Sammy felt his throat move and lips fumble as he made himself close without allowing her to hear or feel how much stress clogged up inside every inch of his body.

But even as those empty sockets sunk low like closing eyes and quivering breath tried to sing, he did not feel her truly smile again. She quieted- and that was good, he surmised- but it was not in his mind yet success. Not until every little bounce from crying ceased and the one good thing still with him returned would he be at peace.

All be damned, he couldn’t let this slip away, one last floorboard beneath his feet as he watched every other break to pieces.

“My friend-” he pleaded, voice smoothly but abruptly shifting from lyrics of willow trees, “Francine, look…!”

What came with smiles? Sammy furrowed his brow as he glanced backward yet again, and he found her laughter, not only lighting up her face but the entire room with it.

The candles flickered with a soft fade, turning the gloss of his body yellow with their light and made clear movements as he lifted his skull and stared sternly at nothing behind her. Things from before became sprawled out ahead:

Lying on the floor, telling him the ceiling was pretty.

Hands on her hips, saying with such casualness that she’d lose weight from starving.

When she saw what he didn’t- what his expression did unmasked as he felt his features contort into a squint.

She laughed every time. What was in common?

…

…

 _Silly._ She was being _silly!_

And that meant that he’d have to be silly too, at such a horrid time as this. But what else did he have? She could find joy before amid what they had believed to be the worst of things; he owed it to her now to find the same glimmer of diamonds in the darkest coal.

“Look!” he repeated again, at first removing his hands only so that she _could,_ in fact, look, but soon finding he’d have to busy them to succeed. “I’m- I’m going to-”

And then, yet another time that blessed sound came from her mouth rang in his ears once more. It was slight, but the little bubble of a giggle popping into Francine’s voice was enough for it to be engraved into time.

The woman, tears still running down her face but with hands remaining pushed aside to uncover eyes, finally pried a sliver of them open in compliance…

…Just before shooting wide open at what would befall them next.

“These glasses!” he exclaimed, shifting a long forgotten but ever-present object out of the fold of his pocket. “That’s what you called them…didn’t you? To help see!” The cheer inserted was so forced that it hurt. “How ridiculous if I were to put them on, as if they could-”

But they _did._

A tone still subdued shattered into a shout, one that echoed far, far beyond the fake walls entrapping them. The pair of glasses gave a small scream of pain of their own, the material of its name cracking just a bit more as they were thrown in front of Francine’s jumping feet.

Sammy stood there- limbs outstretched and dripping, and lungs heaving like he had run a thousand miles- as his sight left him once more.

No, it wasn’t literal sight he had again. That would never come back. It was the kind of vision no one wants to live without; the kind he hesitantly prayed to have again, that Francine chased a god to find, and one that he himself wandered into sin for even the smallest glimpse through these lenses.

_He could remember._

 


	8. Named

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“We used to take sweet counsel together; within God's house we walked in the throng.”_ – Psalm 55:14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey school has been. A lot. So don't worry I'm writing more slowly overall. Thanks for supporting me so much!
> 
> Here's some more wonderful art! Please support the artists!
> 
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/181107526493/lady-lampblack-hello-yes-i-am-deeply-in-love  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/181516031983/a-hymns-of-struggle-oneshot  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/181686042078/startistdoodles-more-christmas-gifts-for  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/182175768708/thank-you-pipesflowforeverandever-for-the  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/182224919008/slipnslideblog-her-eyes-widened-with-an  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/182225128463/slipnslideblog-aaaaaand-doodles-of-rocks
> 
> And thanks AceofIntuition for beta reading! <3

“Sammy?”

Fogged, distant. It sounded like words muffled through water- no. No. It was ink. And the ink pulled and pulled it away until he sunk to the bottom. He could feel his own heartbeat, first strong and wild then less and less and less.

“Sammy!”

Softer.

_“Sammy!”_

Softer even. Nearly gone.

_“…Sammy…!”_

Repeated in his mind until the voice so sweet to his ears belonged to no one.

But that was not the end but the middle, as it warped into something…familiar. It repeated just like that, again and again until something unrecognizable finished its transformation clear as day.

He didn’t feel Francine shaking his shoulders, desperate and wide-eyed, but she stopped all the same as he finally moved his head, stared at her without seeing, and then dipped empty eyes down.

A splatter of in fell from his fingers as they found the thing he had thrown down so unceremoniously, so unkindly for what it was.

So, so much.

The bead trailed down the arch of his knuckles, severed where his fingernail should have been, and trailed down the temples of this old, forgotten pair of glasses, slowly dancing around the edge of lenses. It was cupped in the ridge- briefly- before sliding down and then down to the floor. The cracks broken into them swooped over all behind them not like they were simply in front of things but as if it changed the surroundings to be seen through the glass, and delicate lines were drawn over the speckles on Francine’s jaw as he raised the object up and past her dumbfounded face.

It was almost sacred, the silence. Hollow, the feeling in the air. Soft, this suffocation, as he held his own glasses in front of gaping, empty sockets until he saw through his own filter again for this first time in a century.

As Francine held her hands awkwardly up and to the sides of her shoulders after removing them from her friend, she didn’t see a halo some ways away lift up to see, too.

The change was almost audible, like a string of notes along a piano- light, delicate, _new!_ Incidental music in Sammy’s gasps as his expression widened and he made a small, sharp turn of the head towards where he could feel his fingers twingling.

They were musician’s hands, ones that he not only knew but _remembered_ used to be complete.

It was almost like Francine saw him inspecting his own body, almost as if she simply couldn’t see what he did- that he was transformed. His body was still ink, but something in his soul felt a magic crawl over his body, and his mind he could see skin smooth with calloused fingertips from holding a baton for too long, a shirt barely stained with a inkwell gone rogue.

She watched his hands slap the side of his head, skewing the glasses beneath them as he clawed with not only a desperate but a needing touch, understanding his real face was no longer there but all the same feeling such abrupt, world-tipping reality that he now could recall he ever had it at all.

Small dents formed in his skull where his hands lay so tight, and teeth clenched behind lips that used to be human.

“Sammy?”

And the voice was the same as it was the first time, not his dear friend Susie but Francine.

“I…” he began, beyond belief he could even speak at all, he trembled so much, “I… _remember.”_

Francine felt a drop of ink hit her cheek as he threw his head up, clutching it even harder and screaming a thousand years of someone who thought he was gone forever.

_“I CAN REMEMBER!!!”_

Francine with eyes bloodshot from tears felt them sting not with more coming but with her only available reaction for that- a confused squint.

“…What?” Her head tilted with a small, disbelieving shake. “What the fuck does that mean, Sammy…? The hell-”

She continued to peer, leaning in. Sammy either in his overwhelm or in eager patience waited with wide holes in his face as he sensed her moving close, voice nearer as she looked over the sparkling cracks in front of them.

Her brow curled as she stared, and indeed it wasn’t only light upon them. As Sammy’s mouth stretched side to side in amazement, something like a faded, golden shock of lightning glimmered across the sharp angles before where his eyes would be. Indeed, eyesight was gone, but there was another sense given to him. Before she could say another word, he clasped her by the shoulders with a mania, an excitement Francine had not only seen from her but from anyone in her entire life.

“I KNOW WHO I WAS!” Sammy Lawrence shouted, face twisted between something utterly joyous and awful. “I was…” And here he slowed, breath taken away. A lifetime taken, a lifetime given new, and the first back again on top of the other. All right now, all it ever was, all it would be forever. And despite not being able to read the woman’s expression, he gave her his own, and if she hadn’t known any better about how his body worked she would think those dents in his head could grow tears.

 _“Sammy…!”_ he whispered. So often had his own name been said, and yet it was never his. Not until now, and now it always had been. He winced, clutching her shoulders tight until she felt him leak from her shirt to her skin, and the cold of revelations felt like a baptism even to her. As he broke down and cried, the few facial features he had scrunching into themselves, those spectacles glimmered.

“So…you’re…” she stammered, _“You…?”_ Couldn’t even find words.

Bizarrely, maybe a magic out of another’s control.

It was too much to think about as Sammy Lawrence breathed once again after being buried and left for dead by his own body and soul, too much for the woman beneath his hands, and too much for the other who had chosen to stay silent. No, this man was enough.

“I do!” he affirmed the question unfinished. His voice shook, separated into pieces as truth trembled him to his core and pulled his black lips at their corners. “I remember- a studio! It was this one! I worked there! Music! Cartoons! Jack and Wally- goddammit, _Franks!-”_

Francine had her back to her, and Sammy couldn’t see even if he had his mask through his own speeding return to mind the angel becoming more and more attentive to what was going on, her image fuzzed in the background but not forgotten as she began to gape too.

“-Norman!” And here…quick words soon yet again became slow. And somehow, more meaningful. “Norman…” he muttered, the way his bottom lip tucked in at the last vowel as if he could taste the word. The hum of eternity played in the walls, the pipes drumming fast, low, and slow like names were beginning to crawl up his spine. As they did with Francine when she charged to see her seraph long, long ago, the beings of the studio came up from behind and grabbed him by his shoulders until he nearly fell back with their weight.

 _“Joey…!”_ This one was worse. A long history. Not just with this man’s soul making the walls but the walls he built and tore down before Sammy’s eyes; all the beauty he made and all the confidence he bestowed, all turning out to be a loan instead of a gift that he snatched back into his worn, selfish hands. “He believed in me…!” Sammy let her go, shoulders slinking and hands falling to flex their fingers, twitching with anxiety. “He told me…I could do it. _We_ could do it. That everything would be just fine as long as we believed and pressed on.”

And then a veracity came so sharp from his lungs that it could snap a flower stem in two.

“But he couldn’t do it without Henry. ‘Without Henry, there can’t be-‘”

But before Francine could speak- could interject and try to weave together these names to the story that was now her own, Sammy once again balled his fists and through him to his head because something had become inevitable. He suddenly, abruptly, horrifically shouted, and it was so terrifying that the woman who had learned to trust this creature made from death was safe to be close to abandoned it with a whimper, flinching back as she and Alice saw the most important name of all strike into him like swords inside his belly.

Indeed, this is what it looked like to understand the nature of one’s god.

“BENDY! BENDY! _BENDY!”_

 Finally, the angel stood from her sorrow, causing Francine to gasp once more as she came from behind to grip the mortal’s shoulder. Both stood together, but both too were fixated. Certainly, it was different for Sammy knowing as he did then than it was for Alice. Her wounds were old. His were as fresh as could be, and its release wasn’t meant for human experience. Such betrayal was not intended for those that were supposed to have mortal lifetimes, not for theatrics over two lifelong acts. And so it was more than twice as hard than it ever should have been.

Finally, he began to calm- bodily anyway. The panic in his voice, it remained. It may never go away now.

“He was…just a cartoon…just a cartoon…until…-”

He was folded into himself, hands moved to hold their sides. His own soma continued to fall on him, and his ink soaked into the paper that covered the floor.

 _“…I died,”_ whispered Mr. Lawrence, recalling what he should never.

“Sammy…” Not Francine who answered but the one pulling herself closer and closer to the surface of what she had pushed away, what she had envied that Sammy had repressed. In all her fears, Francine looked up and tried to see what was in that voice, but somehow the bottom of black eyes were pinched and the corners of her mouth were pulled in a way that conveyed so much that couldn’t be given an emotion the mortal knew in her own heart.

But she could feel the way Alice’s grip relaxed, no longer protective but rather…readying herself, either ready to embrace what her former friend put at her feet or preparing to kick it away like she always had for this self-preservation in hell. She had told him what he had done to her, of course, and whether or not he knew it first hand would not change this pain.

He once again filled his lungs like they had never known air, no longer able to hide with his mask gone and memories pinning him where he stood.

“I…was Sammy Lawrence.” No longer a fact by logic but a confession. A belief. A faith. “I was…not this.” A mantra; his ancient promise that this was not how he was meant to be reborn. His fingers twitched, as if his body was betraying itself in allowing it to be spoken. “I’m not supposed to be this.”

And then those sockets drooped too, almost like they were eyes closed, and a hand came over a heart that was not his first, feeling its wretched beat.

_“I’m not supposed to be here.”_

And Alice’s touch by this point was so loose and Francine broke free with ease, with no hesitation doing the only thing she knew to do. Nothing could save Sammy from this, but at least the woman could save herself from having to look at him like this a second longer if she buried her face in his chest and pressed her hands onto his back so tight that she couldn’t be asked to turn her head up to another that made her so very, very afraid.

The angel simply watched them like this, witnessed the way the prophet born again stood curved with his chin towards the ceiling, like was frozen while jumping out of the ocean where he had drowned, just as he broke through the surface. The woman hugged the statue until Alice almost saw her become like one herself, quiet, noiseless sobs that shook her round, soft body against his narrow, slick one; they grew less and less and less almost like she was trying not to breathe, lest such trembling in her chest would quake him a millimeter more.

And then, the candlelight caught something new. As it did when he first moved before her, it enveloped him now as he came back to life. A second weight may have given herself to be held upright at his front, but it was a counterweight to the one leaning upon him from behind. That from the past and she from the future maybe suffocated him, but they balanced him too, and so maybe Alice shouldn’t have taken so much notice as limp arms gradually rose, a palm lovingly staining Francine’s hair with its gentle press as another came between her shoulder blades.

“…I’m so sorry, Francine,” he whispered. There was a pause, one long enough for his friend to return with a _“Why? Why would you be?”_ but it was left upon her tongue to rot as he smothered her against him, as he wisely, hollowly finally understood. “This isn’t where you were supposed to be either.”

Francine’s eyes were slits, trembling inside her skull with a quiet acceptance, a forgiving horror as someone besides Mr. Drew told her what she had always wanted- that it was okay for her to hurt…even when it seemed like everyone else had more reason to. These two held each other, and both in how the studio warped and harmed them were valid in their suffering, hatred, and reconciliation of it all. Both had lost, and both may never find again.

Sammy was beginning to understand how someone else had lost too.

“Susie,” the composer called upon his songbird. It sounded exactly the way it feels when you open a window, and something that blew out with a gust of wind is brought right back safe and sound. It was so serene, so _familiar_ , that Alice didn’t recognize it wasn’t yet another distressed muttering but rather something new- something cracking open Sammy’s door. The creak could almost be heard in the flickering of flames upon wax, all around in the candles of the room.

Her torn lips parted slightly, trying desperately to hold herself in as Sammy’s glasses shined over his face and invited her to walk in and join two halves of her time with him in a reunion long overdue. He used to wear them. Every day. He almost looked like _himself._

She didn’t know what to feel, but she didn’t like it.

 _“…So you must remember,”_ she said as gently as one can spit, taking on Sammy’s own previous stance in holding her own sides, uncomfortable with his gaze and with this name that was not hers. “You must _see_ now that what I told you before is the truth. _How you hurt me like that after all I did for you.”_

The voice wavered back and forth between its dual tones, but its tremble was still evident without that. But the horned woman’s venom did not leave its sting; she did not like how unchanged he was.

 _“Coward!”_ she almost accused his silence, but it was left unsaid as something left her more unsure, sickened, and out of her own control than before. How dare he call her that- _“Susie!”_ He took that from her! _Joey_ took that from her! _SHE WOULD NEVER BE SUSIE AGAIN-_

As Sammy held Francine in his arms, he stared blindly ahead almost right where Alice’s one eye was.

And he smiled.

“No.” A gentle reply, even…even soft with _laughter._ God, how could he?! _How could he do this-?!_

“I didn’t fire you, Susie,” he confessed, “Joey did.” His face flinched, smile more of a grimace. “And I didn’t realize you didn’t know until you were already walking away.”

And just like that, it felt like a hole was cut out of the angel’s chest. They both remembered. That moment where she caught him talking to his new angel, how she covered her face in shame now that she couldn’t be Alice anymore. _The precursor to her never ceasing to be Alice again as soon as she had that choice._

The sudden, twisting knife so, so much as the stress of a studio already falling apart and losing all its love the climax just before the studio flooded and Joey Drew killed them all, even the ones that weren’t supposed to be there anymore. She was going to stay and fight back for what was hers, and that’s what she ended up doing for all eternity.

How acceptable was it for her to hear there was something more? And just like that, it wasn’t Sammy that had a taste of her loss of faith but she for his. The basis and motivation for everything that mattered…not gone but… _different. Dangerously different._

And that’s why she didn’t dare say a word back, more split than ever as she grit her teeth and had a deathgrip on her own sides, afraid she’d fall apart on the spot.

Sammy exhaled the barest chuckle once more, maybe a tease to Alice but a relief to him. The slightest, almost invisible relief.

And it was enough.

As he felt Francine in his arms, he could hear her soft breath through her nostrils, could sense the small stirs against his torso, but he didn’t see the way she looked at all these words and pages around them further and further amazed, it was enough.


	9. Because I Do Adore You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life.”_ – Isaiah 43:4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you my wonderful friend AceofIntuition for beta reading yet again! 
> 
> And to the rest of y'all, I hope you enjoy this chapter!

There was something Joey told someone else a long, long time ago:

_“They can be...unkind," he said, brow furrowed. "Even if they don't want to be. Because they believe they will always hurt others, even if they try not to. And such an assumption will indeed always circle them back to hurting others, because that is their being. Even if you shake them by the shoulders and tell them this isn't true, they will justify it themselves. They're righteous in their own toxicity."_

His words were...hollow. Like wind through the hole in a tree. It was less like he was talking to someone in particular and more like he was narrating something in a story.

_"And coming across them, knowing this, you want to save them. But darling, that might just take you down too."_

He had no idea he was detailing his own demise, a fortune teller for everything he never wanted to be.

There was a time he wasn’t like that, though.

There was a time…but maybe it was long gone.

 

* * *

 

Now, Francine had noticed it before, but only in passing- like accepting that the attic will have dust, or that grass will have morning dew. In the same way, Joey’s office had paper. It covered everything, not like a wrapping but simply in...a loose existence, like you fell asleep under a tree in spring and woke up in late autumn, all the leaves surrounding you but not yet carried away by winter’s wind. And thus, once she knew what these flimsy remnants of life held within them- once she stared at plenty of them long enough- nothing was special about them anymore, not individually. A collective phenomenon, we take little time to pick up every severed leaf fallen upon the ground because we know why leaves fall; Francine knew why papers were kept.

She was wrong.

This was her third time here, and she was introduced to the ways of this realm, this…tiny, infinite space both empty and full. A place she had assumed was a variation of Joey’s “prison.” And all that was left of it now was a shrine to what he had adored, the reason why Bendy existed in all his awful glory. Children. Adoration. Creation. Inspiration. The latter three were given back and forth by the first, and regardless of age Mr. Drew loved them almost as his own.

…And sometimes he did entirely.

These drawings were pinned to his cage in beautiful remembrance of how far, far away he was from everything he wanted, everything this was supposed to be for. And there were so many that Francine simply never thought to look at the ones laid like shifting, thin bricks under her feet, or scattered on his desk like torn newspaper. It wasn’t till now, with her eyes faded red and sore from the tears he made her shed, that she began to see what else Joey kept sacred here. As Sammy inhaled and exhaled, catching his breath after holding in for years on end, her eyes were caught as her cheek pressed against his cold, damp chest and was forced to study the floor.

These things were different.

“Guys?”

It was more the tone than the word that begrudgingly got the attention of a withering angel and an accursed songwriter, either not having heard it before or having not heard it in good time.

“What…-” Francine began to murmur, brow knitted as she gently pushed her cheek off of Sammy’s cold, cold chest, “-Is…all _this?”_

And oh so hesitantly, Sammy let one of the only things he knew was here go, so that she could leave with waves of curiosity and come back with understanding anew. Maybe she could bring something to fill him again, was a sharp, brief sting that came to him without words.

“…What do you mean?”

Her knees bent in the candlelight, hands curled over them as she leaned to view the dim floor. Hair dangled past a frown, and a gleam on her eyes revealed how sharp they were pinned to the ground. There’s a…certain emptiness that doesn’t feel empty at all when you see something you shouldn’t, like when you go through a book and begin to realize it’s a diary hidden in plain sight, like when you turn the corner of an alley to hide from the rain and glimpse past blue brick walls someone stealing a kiss like a thief in the night. Something that maybe shouldn’t matter to you, but you care all the same.

A detachment- just enough so- with a pang of empathy can do wonders for seeing through lies...

…And it turned out, so much more.

Unspeakable- _literally_ unspeakable; she couldn’t find words it- and incomprehensible things. Pictures meant to be text and text meant to pictures- that’s the only way she could describe how scrambled she felt to see them. And the indentations upon the paper were bleeding their ink, and the ink ran off the pages and glues the floorboards beneath together.

A room built upon ritual, myth, and incantation. Of course, the origin of instability would end up being the most stable.

_“…Well?!”_ Francine heard the angel inquire anxiously, voice shaken but eager with the disjoint in topics.

She didn’t look up, and maybe she couldn’t with how mesmerized she was when she answered, “They’re… _things. Weird_ things- I mean. I can’t- I can’t even read them…!”

Her eyes followed the dried stain that bled from what must have been one letter of a word and saw it trace beyond her toes, across page and page and page. She followed it, standing up and walking in a trance; maybe it was, indeed, a hypnosis because it seemed to walk her around…around…around….in a circle, a shuffle under her feet with every step yet not being pushes out of place. She straightened her neck with her chin still angled down, and even the air about her was so thoughtful that Sammy took notice.

Feeling Alice by his side, the prophet reborn to preach yet again asked her what their friend was doing, but the seraph said not a word. Lips painted black parted, and half a face gaped with the kind of discomfort that only comes with discovering why you are who you are.

And the more Francine stared, the more she saw that she was no longer certain if the words had bled to form it or if it was the other way around. A headache burrowed into her skull with how hard she was staring and contemplating, and decisively, she stuck the tip of her shoe and dragged one paper with it.

As the paper slipped out, the ring remained, like it was a shadow instead of a stain.

Far too like the ink demon.

She felt something not meant for human hearts come onto her shoulders and grip them tight.

“Francine?”

Sammy had called for her again, and Alice stood there in wait, and again, she did not reply. The holy- or perhaps its other- often takes breath away.

And that force upon her would either push or pull.

…It pulled.

“It’s…a _circle.”_ And then more quietly, more for herself: _“But what the fuck is it…?”_

“ _FRANCINE-“_

She turned, finding eye sockets that almost seemed to have a brow with which to curl with worry behind those cracked glasses. An outstretched hand reaching blindly ahead stayed in the air a bit, before the four fingers slowly folded and fell to his side alongside a growing expression of unease. He knew Joey now- there was a reason to be anxious of the place that was his.

“Francine, just-…be careful. _Please.”_

And as both he and Alice turned their chins up the tiniest bit- the most minute, instinctive agreement that despite wanting to drag her away, she wouldn’t and shouldn’t be stopped anymore- Francine briefly shut her eyes, squeezed them to compose, and opened them again with an assuring nod.

But something didn’t feel right to Alice, and so just in case, she took a step forward-

And simultaneously, so did her opposite. Francine walked to the center of the ground marked for damnation, bent over, and began to move the papers to see what was underneath-

_“Oh my god-!”_

A soft exclamation, but one wholly filled with shock. A hand was thrown over her mouth- deadening the tail end of her words- and the woman reflexively stood back up and scuffled back on her feet. The guardian angel was quick to give her something to bump into, her chilled, black arm wrapping in front of her collarbone as the hand of it gripped the girl’s shoulder and the other hand pulled back at her dangling wrist.

“What?!” Sammy returned with an equally hushed but panicked voice. He twitched his head around, listening for a sign of anything new, but as Francine felt her jaw drop, Alice overlooked her shoulder and could see the same that she did.

It was dark. It was yellowed. It had been buried for years, but it couldn’t hide any more, and Francine pulled her hand down as what it was, in her mind, now begged the question of what it did.

Feeling her heart race no longer in disgust but in awe, she uncovered her own mouth and stared.

“It’s _blood…!”_ Francine finally answered, and she- shoulders surely shaking from the draw of her breath- looked up to Alice in warning before she pushed out of her hold. The angel allowed this and took another step back to let the woman finish what she started.

The hand over the papers hesitated an inch in the air before touching them again, a dull, reddish stain in a splatter across…something…in view just in front of them. She pulled in her bottom lip, eyes minutely shifting back and forth in an unconscious mind’s debate of whether or not to touch proof that man should never touch certain things at all. She saw her fingers unevenly begin to curl out in reach, and with one firm swallow, she opened her mouth and carefully pulled the wrappings of a mummy away.

It seemed timeless, how long this effort took, feeling like forever but then as if it was a blink of the eye once it was all done. Sammy heard an exhale from his friend, and he anxiously did and undid fists at his side as he awaited to hear what this was.

She stepped out of the ring, the moved papers still allowing it to be kept perfect and unbroken, a seal unfortunately inseparable by hands.

Looming in front of them was the first ritual circle, the same one behind the cutouts, the one once under Francine’s bleeding feet. It was drawn in black, its edge fenced by the inky circle. In the middle, Francine left intact that one discolored sheet- the one red with humanity like she- and surrounding it was…

“Handprints…-” she whispered, “And claw marks…!”

Like someone dipped a cartoon’s and then a monster’s paw in ink, stains so thick they still looked wet were smeared across the floor. There was more ink, too, like something that had that liquid instead of blood was left to bleed out onto the delicate, thin symbols upon the wood that loosened the boards nailed up between worlds.

_“This is where he came from.”_

Francine didn’t- couldn’t- even turn her head away to hear the seraph speak, and Alice was the same. But-

“GOD- _DAMMIT!!!”_

But that she could, a sharp gasp as Sammy threw one hand to his head, right above gleaming glasses that barely covered sockets wide with unbearable upset. It was more than blindness that allowed him to pace back and forth like the two women weren’t there.

“I knew it! I _KNEW IT!”_ the new man began to shout, “He had these _books_ and he had these _things_ and he had these bizarre, _bizarre_ things he said! He said-! He didn’t _miss_ Henry! He didn’t _have_ to! It would be _taken care of-!”_ he seethed, baring teeth, “He said Henry was _coming back!_ And of course, I didn’t believe him- not after all I heard him _say_ to him when this all started-!”

He didn’t, of course, notice Francine furrow her brow less and less in worry and more and more as she began to pick up what Alice hadn’t.

“He said to me that fate was like a machine! It could only work so long before you have to patch it back up! No, you fool! YOU messed it up! _YOU_ drove him away! And now it’s _KILLED US-!”_

That last shriek faded into the air as his voice was stolen away, squeezed out as two hands gripped upon each of his forearms. She allowed him pause to catch his breath, and so he did, it being his turn to feel the rise and fall in his shoulders second by second as someone else held him.

“…Sammy?” Francine asked in that voice- the one high-pitched every time she found something new where she shouldn’t.

…

…

“Yes.” A statement, not a question. He wasn’t ready for this, but he accepted it anyway.

“…How much do you remember?”

And while Alice sneered behind her, not yet revealing the pit in her stomach, Francine made it so Sammy was thinking the exact same thing as she and her. And it for him was so, very much. He literally softened in her touch, and those sockets of him relaxed with a returning slouch.

_“…Everything,”_ he discovered with a whisper, _“Like it was yesterday.”_

And that’s why Alice was so unhappy, because she was always the one that held their past safe and sound, and she found that he was recalling things that with the toll of 80 years she could not.

Francine exhaled herself, looking down at the waist of his pants where his nervous, melting self-collected and leaked over onto the floor drip by drip. She was inevitably drawn in by the sight of the engravements both on the floor and in writing, by sacred text and then the art of children, and…

She had to know how one led to the other so very, very badly.

“Tell me.”

And so he did. It was jumbled, a narrative that didn’t start from the beginning and skipped back and forth as strings tied events together like a conspiracy theorist’s board or a spider that made a web so big it couldn’t find its way out, but it was as complete and as trustworthy as someone who had just lived through it. Sammy told her and reminded Susie about how Joey used to be the most loving man in the world, how the sun seemed to shine through him because he made it seem like you shined it onto him with your own eyes. How proud he was of everyone- genuinely, sincerely delighted to know you and to be with you.

How by all appearances, he may have been the best man to have ever lived simply because he believed you were your best, too.

About how Sammy overheard the conversation of when Henry was wondering what it would be like if he moved away someday, and something not even Joey knew about till then came out of the old man’s soul. And it wasn’t wrong to be afraid, Francine knew, but Sammy told her that Joey was so much so that it almost seemed like every other part of him up till then had been a liar. No one knew or ever guessed once they handed their hearts over to him that Mr. Drew maybe wanting to be your foundation didn’t always have one of his own, and him crumbling apart would make you crumble too.

And feeling the world shake under his feet, Henry looked over the horizon and ran the other way, leaving Joey to grip onto the edge of his cliff and out of sight.

The rest that stayed to watch Joey dangle were dragged right down, too, with his desperate, possessive hands.

A slow landside that Sammy saw coming. The stress in his eyes, the sting in his voice- they didn’t exist before, but did now, and one would expect and even forgive such because it was Mr. Drew, the man who had always wanted the best for them. He still did, but what the best came to mean, of course, was something besides what really was entirely.

Sammy the prophet warned them, and yet he couldn’t leave himself. He couldn’t leave them behind; he couldn’t leave Susie behind. Joey’s angel used to believe in him, even when he didn’t believe in himself.

He did, of course, believe in something else.

They just didn’t know it until something else took them all away.

…

…

…

Francine walked over to the desk behind them as Sammy finished, overlooking what was left of the office, and found these too were the same as Joey left them. And just like with the things upon the floor, she spread her palms over these pages and pulled them away to read the rest of this story. They found scrawlings that read over and over:

_“I miss him…I miss him…My family...My family”_

_“She wouldn’t have wanted this, couldn’t have wanted this. I’ll bring them back. I’ll bring him back, and then we’ll be whole again.”_

_“I need Linda to smile again. She’s supposed to smile again.”_

And given the nature of the heart of Joey Drew, it was indiscernible and didn’t matter if these were right from his mind like the rest of this universe or if he had written these himself before it was even unleashed for others to bear.

And then, most of all, somehow in its own tone of voice:

_“This can be fixed.”_

And then they could see his then pen had drawn his feelings in an entirely new way, notes and questions and studies until worries and fears devolved into belief- belief that what he had already believed in was forever true. It wasn’t a fault in him or even Henry, but rather the universe itself with its fragile thread of magic weaving through life needed to be pulled and mended again like the sewing of a quilt falling apart at the seams. Francine read them out loud, described them for Sammy as Alice looked over her shoulder too. Her fingers nearly clawed into the table as she curled them in dismay upon finding the final, decisive page open in a tome left upon the seat that detailed how to connect two souls as kin forever. It asked for blood, it asked for ashes, and it asked for something that Joey wrote he did not have.

And so, of course, he used something else instead, and so a ritual meant for consented comradery became a violation. Joey didn’t have a piece of Henry to give without him, and for his betrayal in trying to use something else that mattered to his son, Joey and every last inch of the life he had left was killed, and the only family he’d ever see again was the one he accidentally created himself, born right behind where the three trapped souls stood this very moment.

“We have to do something,” she decided.

And so, they must.

They gathered the few things Joey left of theirs, Sammy’s glasses upon his face, an ax in Alice’s hands, and all the bits and pieces of Francine’s old life centered behind her back, placed carefully in the shelves of someone who didn’t want to let anyone else go. They were to stay, because unlike Joey, letting go was something she could do.

“Are you _sure_ you remember?” the woman hesitantly asked Sammy, tone both bold and frightened all at once. But of course. She remembered how she felt opening the door into the unknown from the second she came to the studio looking for someone. It felt exactly as it did back then as it happened all over again.

“Yes,” Sammy confirmed, a small nod as a frown stretched and showed teeth. “There was a room that I…was led to…when you followed the ink demon, Francine; the mask- it hid much of it from my sight but…I remember. There were things in there with his name.”

“Well, we’ll tell you what we see, and you point us where to go,” Alice returned- but not without a scoff. “If you _do_ remember and _aren’t just going to get us all killed.”_

Francine, solid and resolute with eyes that trembled in her sockets, gave Alice a look. The angel’s one eye narrowed.

“Are you sure you want to come? Don’t you want _to stay safe? If he-”_ And she choked right up before finishing speaking the worst.

The young woman returned it with a nod. “Yeah. Of course.” And then like dusting snowflakes off her head walking across the road one icy day, she shook her head to be rid of trepidation. This was better. This was better than waiting for something to happen to her instead of for her to make something happen. Not again. Never _fucking_ again.

“I have to.”

She checked her jeans one last time to make sure her phone was there, and then satisfied, her soft hand came to hold his wet one yet again, feeling like it was meant to be for a final time.

“Lead the way,” she said to the blind man, and yet she was the one that opened the door. The knob turned and she let go, allowing an invisible pull to swing it open for them to escape this cage.

And seeing Joey had left them something to look for after all up ahead, Sammy’s mask was left scraped and torn as it leaned next to the doorway and watched the three break the barrier of a haven. It was meant to keep them safe, but how can someone be safe at all if it’s not by own their choice?

Three people their god loved like his children left to look for what was left a fourth. And his name…

 …Was Henry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's all coming together now, isn't it? I'm excited for what comes next.


	10. Guardian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”_ – 1 John 4:18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Hymns art for you guys to see too!
> 
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/182949151423/heeeeey-pipesflowforeverandeverplease-dont-be  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/183001222953/gore-warning-a-concept-in-silhouettes  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/183055026548/waruihoshi-pipesflowforeverandever-shared-on  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/183072704098/another-gingie-doodle-pipesflowforeverandever  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/183143329363/happy-birthday-pipesflowforeverandever-heres  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/183173131988/wolfheart7snow-so-maybe-i-went-a-little-crazy
> 
> Thanks Ace for beta reading and for making my birthday special!
> 
> A SOFT WARNING: This chapter may be more emotionally intense than the previous.

To live in the belly of a monster is, indeed, different once you know it is moving around you instead of you moving through it. The haunting of a home becomes more violent once the spirits know _you_ know; there is nothing to hold back. The world is vastly, overpoweringly different when you recognize that it isn’t dead, but that it is alive. Such a thing was tangible now, plucking the hairs on Francine’s arms like strings of a cello- singing its horrid song in the back of her mind as its choir hid in the shadows of her peripheral, strung its finger slowly, lingeringly down the spine.

This world did not want her where she was.

That's how the three were as they ran through the darkness, filling the hollow bones of a living thing. Francine kept her hand tight around Sammy's as he guided them with his voice.

A pipe **burst** as he said to turn left at the scratched poster of the Butcher Gang.

The floor **broke** upon when they came to the crossroads, forcing them to jump over the gap.

And the lightbulb that swung over the hall **exploded** and left them in the dark when Sammy said they must be getting close.

**_Joey did not want them here._ **

It didn't cross any of their minds, however, why he wasn't trying harder, because if he surely was, this would have long been over; what’s three souls to a god?

From experience, they should have known.

There was simply too much that begged to be controlled.

As Francine listened over the yelps in her own breath and the shouts of her shoes against rotting, chewing floors, she heard this world scream. The patchwork universe was becoming undone over and over again, stitches falling at the seams before being sewn up like skin in a surgery before her very eyes. A glance to the wall- a searcher. It was throwing it's arms up, pounding against the wall that was breaking apart between them. She screamed and the wall closed shut again, the most sickening squish as it was crushed between boards before it could reach her, only part of it to touch her being the splash of ink on her side.

Alice urged her along, despite her body's insistence to freeze. Francine didn’t notice the panic in the other woman’s expression; the angel was so strong, so insistent even as she was voluntarily putting herself within all that she detested and feared.

Just for her silly cherub.

At one point, the screech of Norman sounded down the hall, a man refusing to be subdued. _Pound, pound, pound._ Surely, he wasn't _that_ strong. And yet the floor quaked to its foundation every time, throwing the three to the ground like turbulence throwing passengers on a plane. A pinball bouncing back and forth, hardly allowing the woman of flesh and blood to stand as the world tilted back and forth. Ink ran between her fingers as they softened her blow- ink running like a stream that grew more and more forceful as it tried to stave her back.

It didn’t need to be said aloud it was just like when she first looked for Mr. Drew, king chained in the depths of his own castle. But now they sought for his beloved son, and just as she escaped death to find the father, so would they find him. They had to; there was no choice.

But then, of course, the worst was to come.

Stress, stress, stress. Blood pressure in black veins going wild. Francine heard the hum, and as she looked back there it finally came. Behind her, filled with emptiness- everything horrid in a human heart taking all the color, even beginning to drain the dye in her clothes with its hungry shadow:

_Hummmm..._

It reverberated, filling their chests as she waited, and waited, and waited, for surely it was going to come, stopping in place as amid the chaos, something far graver waited to eat her up.

…

...

**...**

**Drip.**

Her eyes shot wide just as tendrils like ink spreading in water soaked out of the giant stain behind her back. He was here. **The lord had come.**

"We have to move! _NOW!!!"_

And her volume increased the grey shroud’s size and sound. In the darkness grew shinier and shinier a moving figure, a body slick with the same thing that made her friends alive and yet was not kind to her at all- not anymore. Alice ordered her to keep her head forward, but she couldn’t help it. The shake in the angel’s tone- the sheer panic- it only gave Francine more reason to look at what she was afraid of. The teeth underneath sodden horns seemed pearlier with each limped step, bouncing back and forth in and out but overall gradually into sight as the seconds passed faster and faster. Steps sloshing into a run, run, _run._ Hands coming forward, reaching, grabbing, _clawing-!_

 **"I CAN'T-!"** the old man's voice screamed all around them.

Alice gasped and turned around finally to see **him** too, just as horrible mercy would be rained upon the one of them deemed most precious.

**_"I CAN'T LET YOU!!!"_ **

Francine, the slowest, screamed.

And just as their God swept down his mighty hand to reclaim his beloved lost lamb- so close that his pained breath was not only heard but felt underneath her skin and into her own lungs like an infection that made it hard for her to breathe too- Francine saw his giant, gloved hand ready to save her be shot down with a blurred force. She fell back into Sammy, who shouted himself in terror and held her close as they skidded to a halt once again.

Alice, as Joey had known, was always her guardian angel.

The seraph panted, her legs outstretched and ax ready to swing again. The demon screeched, bleeding at the wrist and staining his white glove, murky drops of his own soma falling from bulbous fingertips and into the living wood that carried his blood and that of all his treasured children. He took another, stunted move and Alice swung the blade from over her shoulder again, groaning with rage and effort as the wood of the handle was parried by a wet yet solid arm. His breathing, as with Francine, filled her ears, and the eyeless gaze of the demon burrowed into the holes in her face like parasites eating her inside out.

But it did not stop her. Maybe it never did before, either. No matter how scared she was of the demon, she had never complied with his will to keep her in her place. Alice always came back, came back to reclaim the day as her own. It was only fitting that the final day, too, would pass much the same way.

Francine shouted her name, Sammy the only thing keeping her from running to save her friend, and that was all Alice needed to believe once and for all...

...That sometimes the progress of another means more than all of your own. Love requires a sacrifice, and Alice indeed loved her.

"GO! _I'll be fine!_ _The wo_ rst he can do is KILL ME!"

Her grimace twisted across her face until after the longest second in the world, her lips had curled up. She was a broken doll learning to smile once again- both so another may as well but also so that she too may have opportunity to smile again someday-

Sunshine. She missed sunshine. Hand in her hand, seeing Francine happy and alive.

…-With her.

In retaliation to such hope, the demon bent his arm is such a way it shoved her back, hair thrown around her face and getting caught in her halo. Her head was thrown down, but with horns pointed at him like a bull and the slit of her eye visible was filled with daggers that had waited in a sheath for a very, very long time.

Time to see if they had become rust with all these tears shed.

"Fix this, and _maybe it'll bring me back."_

And with that, she threw herself at him again, not another word, not another look. She would come back, somehow. Her soul would either remain in the ink, die forever, or feel daylight again, and so there was nothing worth ceremonial grace or last words of wisdom. Alice was ready for anything that came after this, even if she’d never live to see heaven come down to earth, or even if she was there as hell would raise out of the ground.

Francine couldn't stay to watch the eternal struggle of angel versus demon as her prophet blindly pulled her away, but she refused to shut out the sounds that chased at her heels, grew dimmer and dimmer and yet pierced her even worse the farther it seemed to be. She heard the angel curse, she heard the seraph scream, and then distantly- just as they found the door- she heard the woman finally pass away. Her voice croaked sweet with those two tones, different ones that both loved and loathed everything Francine brought with her. And so maybe it was worth such split feelings, as it killed her in the end- perhaps something worthwhile to die for.

They both hoped so, even if only one of them had seen it coming.

Susie returned to the very thing she hated most, her black and white puss soaking into the floorboards as she saved a life, metal door closing somewhere she would never be able to see. Just as they had met, Alice knew that there was a door that was never supposed to open for the strange, nosy girl but did so for her all the same.

Her purpose from the moment she stepped foot into Joey Drew Studios was to be an angel. And now she was finally what she wanted to be all along.

Morning would break before this woman once again.


	11. Father

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“And he identified it and said, ‘It is my son's robe. A fierce animal has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces.’”_ – Genesis 37:33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I painted a piece for my favorite drabble of mine, What's Not Yours!:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/183301393788/i-got-knew-paper-and-water-color-pencils-for-my
> 
> And Star made me this AMAZING birthday art:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/183291782403/startistdoodles-dream-too-big-and-you-will
> 
> Speaking of drabbles, this chapter is heavily based upon them. In particular, I encourage you to go to the works list for this series and find "Another Tuesday Afternoon," "Family," and "Rose Tea" if you haven't read them yet. The first snippet featured also takes place very shortly after "Legacy."

_“Fix this…and maybe it’ll bring me back.”_

Francine had no idea why Alice said that. That wasn’t part of the plan. They just had to do something- that was it. They only knew something had to finally change- no real fucking idea what that actually meant.

Alice would come back, Sammy knew; she hadn’t “died” in a long time, but the puddles would keep her, of course. They kept her before.

…Then why? Why say it like that?

What was at stake besides Francine’s own mortality? And what was she in this world beyond a hope that if she can survive, maybe there’s something worth living for?

_“Plenty more,”_ Alice would have said if she could.

Because facing the demon, she had already seen something that would make itself known very, very soon.

After all, there was one toon that died and never came back.

 

* * *

 

“Copper and gumdrops-”

“Joey-”

“-And flower chains and rings-”

“What are you doing, Joey?”

“Listing a few of my favorite things!”

A young man chuckled at his strange father. His hands squeezed the grass at his sides as he sat next to a fellow that looked nothing like him, perhaps, while being in a place in his life he never expected to be.

But even if it wasn’t the expected didn’t mean it wasn’t right. That’s how it felt to him- right.

Their second day on vacation, the budding- no… _blooming_ artist looked up to the puffy clouds in the sky and felt sunshine tangle his hair. There was something in him, something that always wanted to reach up to the heavens since he was just a little boy. Joey did, too, and perhaps that’s why he and his adoptive son felt so safe being vulnerable about dreams and loves with one another. There was a difference though; one man wanted to touch what was above their heads, and the other wanted to take it as his own.

But they admired that difference. A gentle grasp upon fate versus claiming tomorrow with a clenched fist, and perhaps neither was entirely bad nor good.

The young man thought of this in this moment, a smile flickering softly upon his face as peaceful but bright eyes caught light of the sun and the fire in Joey’s red hair.

“You’re a strange guy, Joey.” Not as if this phrase hadn’t been used as an insult towards the old man, but in this case his son meant it as a tease; it was taken as such.

“I’m a lot of things, my dear,” the other cartoonist replied, humor dripping off his tongue like sap thick on a maple tree. “But-”

And then, with a similar, sharper light in his own eyes, the old man said something the younger did not anticipate.

“-What are _you?”_

Father and son looked at each other, the latter turning his head against the soft wind to someone already facing him- evaluating him, perhaps, in the most loving way one can. And, as always, nothing was there that was new, and yet- as Joey always was- it somehow felt distinctly, importantly _different._ Smile dropped not in unhappiness but ponderance, the young man held his gaze a bit so two soft, blazing lights locked in their meeting eyes. His head turned, breeze combing dark locks as pursed lips opposed what was in front of crossed legs.

Of course, Joey knew how to make something so silly into something so suddenly significant to life itself.

The man saw green blades of grass and the tiny wild bluebells hidden in their overgrown shadows, swaying back and forth…back and forth…back and forth…as the wind moved him the same way too.

And with the father who adored him so looking on with nothing but total adulation, the person sitting in the greenery upon the tallest hill in the field brought his stare up to the sky that seemed so close to here when he was standing at the bottom just before. His words were tender, but bold- ready to be picked up by the air and blown through the clouds and past the planets all the way out there.

_“I am…-”_

 

* * *

 

“Henry.”

Sammy murmured the name he had remembered seeing not so long ago, but the man himself gone for 50 years. Even longer, though, he had been gone until Sammy remembered the person that left a shadow for Francine to walk in had been someone he had truly known before it all had gone to hell.

The woman that reminded Mr. Drew of his own lost son was in Sammy’s arm now. The door had closed behind them and as they listened to Alice die, her back slid down on the wall until the young woman was slumped on the floor. Sammy, in all he could do for her, held his lamb as her heart race and tired, tired eyes tried not to cry; he fulfilled her only request-

_“Who was he?”_

She wanted to know more about he that motivated Joey to curse them all to this. He knew Joey missed him, knew he had gone, and knew Joey would have done anything to get him back…apparently, twice.

And both times had failed so, so terribly, it seemed.

And so the Lawrence who knew him, hardly stable himself as his body melted with fear and stress of what was behind them and what he knew loomed ahead, abided in remembrance- reverence, perhaps.

Because Henry didn’t deserve this either, did he?

The lost musician tilted his chin up as dripping, dripping arms held around her back and a wet chin rested upon her head. Certainly, this was as much for him as it was for her.

“He was a young man…” Sammy began, tone soft and grip shaking, desperate to forget something he used to long for- his lord sending the angel back to the puddles. “…Even younger than me, and I was _damn_ young.”

She didn’t see ahead- couldn’t with Sammy in front of her- and so they were both blind to the few falling papers from the chamber behind, shelves upon shelves of books and pictures and keepsakes Joey tried to keep locked away. An archive- a different sort of sacred place than the kind Sammy himself once found sacred; ironically, it could have been to him now with all it represented.

Afraid of the demon returning for them, focusing on what mattered became desperately natural with calm or silent voices.

“Joey…he saw so much in us, Francine. We were just kids. Henry and-…Susie-…and I…and others- we were _kids_. And he believed in us. At least, for a while. But goddammit, he-” And his voice cracked. _“He really did.”_

The two shivered, knowing he was listening, and Francine nudged against Sammy to indicate that for that very reason, they need to keep moving. _He could only be so distracted._

“Tell me more,” Francine insisted, squeezing her hand in his; a calm voice hid a desperation- a high ground upon which to stand as the rest of the world began to sink.

“He was…a kind person,” Sammy continued to narrate of Henry, the sounds spinning around his head as Francine led him by the hand slowly around, her eyes gazing over all the things here for the lost artist’s name. “Quiet, at times, and didn’t raise his voice unless you were really that much deserving of it. Smile scrunched up his whole face, reached his eyes…-”

Sammy stopped in place here, momentarily, his fingers gently rolling over his own face; perhaps he was trying to replicate that grin from so far back. Of course, the curled lips faded back down as urgency filled them again.

“…And he was a…wonder to work with. He and Joey? They fed a lot of pipedreams together, but…” He chuckled, sourly. “Look at all the pipes this dream of theirs got us. Art come to life _all_ come true.”

Bitter? Yes. But perhaps nothing could be bitter enough after all the years.

He shook his head, squeezing Francine’s hand again as he heard a rumble in the distance. They had to keep going.

“Animator. Lead animator. Good at it, too. He designed Bendy singlehandedly-…well. So to speak. Rumor was that the he based it on a real person. He-”

A bookshelf fell in front of them, causing the woman to shriek and the man to reflexively pull her back. They stood there, limbs outstretched in panic, before nothing more came just yet and Francine pulled herself out of Sammy’s arms again to lead them on and past the obstruction. The man’s voice shook, but it still kept him solid- despite his melting self in this distress- to recall what put them here.

“I…I know for sure Boris was inspired by him. Kind, calm- I can see it.” A pause. “…Yeah. I can see it,” he added more somberly.

Francine frowned as she helped guide her friend over the overturned shelf, eyes flickering all over for signs they could finally stop that wouldn’t come. Indeed, it looked like a breeze was blowing through the room, maybe trying to hide the word she was looking for with its rustling and distractions. And likewise, something stuck Sammy with deadly, deadly seriousness.

He realized something.

_“Francine,”_ he whispered. The one by that name did her best not to let her heart beat any faster; the tension was tangible not just in the dark, moving room but strung within his words.

_“Boris.”_

And her eyes shot wide because if Boris represented someone, it meant something, too, that she had never been able to meet him.

But…it turned out to be for another reason, as well, that her breath hitched. As they finished crawling over the books the studio had thrown down in a fit, there was a loud, distinctive screech.

“…What is that?” Sammy nearly squeaked. “It-…”

“A door,” Francine answered.

In the archives they’ve traversed, it had been full of shadows. Lightbulbs dangled overhead with such dim light, swinging back and forth, back and forth. She gasped and jumped in her skin as they went out in a blink then and there, and suddenly a light was flooding up ahead, past the next corner.

Both their hands gripped at once as they braced themselves for the truth ahead.

 

* * *

 

_“I never meant to hurt him.”_

A whisper of his own as a young man, staring at his feet, only had the strength to move his hand under his lover’s arm. He didn’t reach for the fingers resting on the bed, but they ended up clasped all the same.

“Of-…of course you didn’t, Henry…” Marvin, a man so confident, so vibrant and loud, was for once hushed and wide eyed after all his partner had told him happened that day. Dark eyes flicked over the man he adored, lips slightly parted with words he was still trying to find. “You were just…asking for advice, darlin’. Who the hell was he to take it so…so…-”

The man whose daughter Joey called his own grandchild still couldn’t believe all that had happened, and yet somehow saw it coming. So attached- so _easily_ attached Joey was. Ain’t all bad but…-

…As he saw tears drip down Henry’s face, Marvin knew that attachment had to come with preparedness, and apparently 50 years of age wasn’t enough for Joey to be ready when things don’t turn out as expected.

And so instead of paying mind to a gut feeling proven right, Marvin chose to brush the bangs out of Henry’s face. The strands of hair moved as gently, as softly as ever through his fingers as he made room to lean in and place a kiss slow and apologetic onto his forehead.

Henry just squeezed his hand tighter as he tried not to sob.

“All you did was ask what your dad would think about moving,” he repeated a fact, pulling the smaller Henry so his powder blue shirt was much closer to his own red flannel. “That’s all! It’s…normal, darlin’- it’s normal for people to wonder.”

Another kiss, Marvin pulling his future husband into his chest.

“Not your fault that he couldn’t wonder himself.”

Finally, the other man twisted his head in response, allowing Marvin to put his chin on the top of his head and stain his shirt a darker shade with tears.

“I just…I thought…-”

“I know,” the taller one interrupted with a soothing, affirming murmur, his stubble scruffy against Henry’s forehead. He knew he couldn’t finish, and he didn’t have to.

Joey didn’t mean to, but he had always been hiding something. And when something came to light under threat of change, the perfect image Henry had of him fell apart.

Marvin sighed into his love’s black locks, Henry feeling warm breath into his scalp and making him sigh himself- albeit much more shakily. That was more than enough for the comforter, rubbing his nose against the other’s skull as he began to contemplate too. What a mess…what a mess…

Only so much left to do with it. Marvin shouldn’t have been so surprised at the logical conclusion.

_“I think we should go.”_

Henry’s response was muffled into his chest, and maybe that’s why it seemed to cut right into him. But…it was in the other man’s heart too. Marvin closed his eyes and began to rock them both back and forth as they sat upon their bed.

_“I think so, too.”_

Blue and red wrapped into each other in the dull brown backdrop of their bedroom with the blinds closed, so tangled in the grief of change that maybe they never fell asleep that night. But their daughter was- safe and sound- just a few feet away in her crib, and making sure she had a stable life to rest her head in was what mattered most.

Joey agreed, but in an entirely different way. People can love just as much as the other but express it so that they never once match. And like the father and son- so very, very unalike yet kindred in spirit to the very core- found much in common in their different ways, and so it meant that much more when it was truly put to the test.

Sometimes, love becomes rash decisions. Henry, afraid of the first real glimpse of negativity into the man he set his foundation upon, ran away in fear of the floor crashing beneath his feet. Marvin, in his love for his fiancé and their child, encouraged it. And so it only made sense for Joey to feel all alone in a world he created to share with his cherished family.

And in his love, he did not blame them.

In his love, he blamed fate.

In his love, he found himself entitled to take back what was meant to be his.

_Just as a good father should for his beloved son._

But as we all know so well, it took everything but.

Now Francine and Sammy just wanted to know if it had taken Henry after all.


	12. Son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you…”_ \- Philippians 1:3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for beta reading, Ace!

_“I don’t **want** you to die…!”_

The room was dark, corners washed in shadows. The blinds were open, letting in the cold, biting air blown through the window from stars in a black sky. With the way he was crying- on his knees, leaning over the side of her bed, both hands gripping just one of hers- you would have thought that Mrs. Drew was really dying right then and there.

But no, she was just old, and she was just telling her son that some things become more and more inevitable with age.

That people come and go, all in their due time.

But isn’t that everything fate _shouldn’t_ be? Wasn’t magic meant to preserve things that are _good?_

Shouldn’t the good _stay?_

“Why can’t you just… **live forever?!** I know you _can’t,_ mama, but-… ** _why can’t you?!”_ **

Nonsense from someone so desperate, only at the first- not even sign. The first _wisp_ of a possibility Joey would eventually lose someone he loved, whom he built his life around and upon.

This wasn’t a time where they expected her to die, but the idea reduced him to tears…

_…Just as a good son should do at such an affront to the way things should be._

And an omen it turned out to be, as death came for her suddenly, unexpectedly a short time after that night, and it affirmed that Joey had every right to be so afraid.

Joey Drew’s mother was in every sense of the word mythical. A myth herself that told such stories- made anyone believe that anything is possible if you listen to her long enough. She raised Joey to believe in magic, and she raised Joey to believe he was magic, too, just by existing, and he believed the same of her.

Somehow in such admiration and closeness there came distance. She was a fairy tale, even when she saw and spoke to her lovely boy every last day. If he was born in a different day and age, he would have heard his mother be called a changeling, and with the way she passed things onto him, he would have been that too. People fear the unknown while fae embrace it, so surely the confidence- this…magic about them both made them infallible in some way humans are not; this was the spell that bound almost all who knew the Drews, even upon each other.

Maybe this is how Joey was so unprepared. Because he was human, too, and so he _did_ fear change. Just not how people expected, not after seeing the sparkle in his eyes and warmth in his heart. A fire, he was, and fires are good.

And fires burn, burn, burn if something doesn’t control them.

He did rebuild, but he did not consider her death as true loss. He should have, but he didn’t; he didn’t realize there was another way to cope, with his indoctrination to always “be his true self” with smiles and wonder and no inkling of actual, meaningful sadness. That would have disappointed her, surely, to fail in such an egregious way. So he did obediently as she asked and rekindled the magic in the family’s blood, went forth to bring that brightness in him to the world…not expecting to blind his own child.

And without even knowing it- and certainly with no intent- with the way she filled his head with hopes, dreams, and legacies, Joey’s mother had become her son’s demon.

 

* * *

 

 

The archives were, as Sammy recalled from when he came here with his sight, certainly something to behold. Dreamlike, as everything was that brought them closer and closer to the truth of this place- more surreal. The bookcases towered along walls with no ending height- turning with a slight twist like somewhere up there was a giant that twirled them like string in its fingers. And there were so many things upon the shelves that one could sit and stare at a single spot for hours as they tried to unfold the story told without touching the binding of a single book. Objects- an orange yoyo with its loop unheld by idle hands for years. A purple locket someone used to keep in their pocket and clutch when things went wrong to remember some things are right. Green dice and red playing cards, shining like gems stowed away from a black and white world.

The rest of the studio was devoid of these things because everything personal that meant something to someone, and the depth and detail in the vastness filled to the brim proved just how much was taken away.

Memories of people that weren’t allowed out.

Poor ol’ Sammy Lawrence didn’t know this, though, back when he retrieved his glasses from here in his single-minded trance. But here were the disciples now, running down with soft pants of breath and a tremble in their grunts of effort, down its aisles in hope that the store’s warden wouldn’t find them as they stole its secrets away. Indeed, the darkness was so, so much thicker than before wherever it was seen; Sammy didn’t need eyes to _feel_ it tangibly in the air. Francine didn’t even need to hear past the thunder of her heartbeat to know the **drips** of Bendy might be just seconds away.

Wanting to feel nothing else, the man gripped her hand tight as the labyrinth inch by inch either allowed them a way out or further in.

Groaning, holding her palms against the door after pulling them to the other side, the woman noticed her heart trying to get out of its chest from more than just the run. Cold- metal under her fingers. A final, loud exhale before she squeezed her eyes shut, and a gentler sigh as she wearily opened them once more as she lifted herself back up to find-…

The silence that followed made Sammy’s stomach flip.

“Francine…?”

…

…

“Sammy?” Her voice closer to him now, but not facing him. He could tell, and with the way her words struck they might as well have been written right in his head. “When you saw his name…how did it look?”

A pause, as he wasn’t sure if he wanted what came after his own reply. He tilted his head and raised it up again, but it only could delay so long.

“It was just…a name on a book, I think.” Couldn’t even make himself ask the obvious “why?”

Another pause before suspicions were confirmed.

_“…This definitely isn’t what you saw.”_

Past her gaping expression was something…new. Like the rest of the archives, there were things everywhere, but it felt so…different. Just simply, purely, fundamentally _different._ Posters on the wall- Boris and Bendy together, hand in hand in nearly every one. She moved to hold Sammy’s once more upon their sight, too, lest her friend grow afraid of the quiet or she lose her mind at it all. Smiling, friendly faces scratched and marred with time, but still preserved just like them. They were plastered on either side of a room- or hall, given the nature of how quickly shadow came from the distance ahead- and once her gaze trailed with it, there-

“AH-!”

The woman flinched as something sparked, her shoulders raising and free hand clawing the air with an abrupt and unstable step back; what wasn’t posters was mangled- wood boards bending and twisting to show the monster of the machine just behind them, like peeling off skin to see flesh and veins- pipes and wires. They looked _hurt,_ even, and it made her feel the same way.

Especially so when Francine saw what was gluing them hardly in place was the lifeblood of all their pain- _the ink._

So stunned she was that it took a moment for her to recognize Sammy had again taken a protective stance, putting himself more in front of her and yelping himself at her own noise.

“I’m- I’m fine,” she soothed quietly, unable to hide the tremor in her voice as she pulled in her lips and let them go in a sigh. “Just some…electrical stuff.” She swallowed hard, feeling stress in how hard her cheeks pinched under her squinting, aching eyes at the occasional sudden brightness ahead. “We gotta be careful walking through.” A squeeze on his hand came for emphasis, which at first was stiff and unresponsive, but then it eased right back with hers with a hesitant but renewed vigor.

“No way but forward,” he bitterly knew without being told.

That wasn’t the only reason for trepidation, though. Inkling by inkling, Francine would find a word for it eventually, like the pipes started to leak down her back and make her shiver. It would be _“vulnerable.”_ Not just for her- this truly was something not intended to be seen.

Then…why let it be found?

Her question was interrupted as something else revealed itself, too, a look of unease becoming straight amazement. Past the posters that tried to patch and cover wounds of a building that should have been long dead was something that seemed to be dead itself-

Dolls on dusty shelves, models and sketches- just about anything you could imagine this character take the shape of-

“…What do you see?” the prophet anxiously asked, the black “flesh” underneath his eye sockets pinching up a bit behind glasses, dents almost seeming to twitch like troubled eyes.

And soft and shaking upon her tongue, both knew it meant something but neither what when she replied:

_“Boris.”_

After all, the place was alive with magic. Anything was possible, evidently.

The head of a dancing demon was tilted to lay its head on another plush that seemed far too kind to be something as sinister as a wolf, both looking on blankly in frozen adoration. Friends forever, and ever, and ever.

“Could he be here too-?”

Another ponderance cut short as in an oh so familiar way to when Francine visited Joey in his hiding, the dark was pulled back and again bestowed something for her to find.

Someone was here, alright. But maybe not anymore.

The woman in blue didn’t know the color of her shirt nearly matched the one of the man in the picture frame she cautiously moved to grasp in her hands, but the look in his eye was bright enough between them. A small piece of glass twinkled both visually and audibly as it fell from deep cracks with her lifting, and as she trailed her round fingers carefully across what was left in front of the photo to wipe the dust off, she saw the fresh trails of someone else of human size that had done the same.

Not a spot of ink upon those smiling faces.

“…A man,” she narrated to her anxiety-ridden friend, “With-…with another. I think they’re-…friends? Dating? One’s holding a baby and just-…they look really happy, I think.”

Sammy frowned, unsure if he recalled anything of particular significance about an infant.

Meanwhile, the pipes’ horrid echo seemed more hollowing by the second, as it _did_ mean something to someone present but unseen as always. Francine didn’t notice it getting worse as suddenly, Sammy did recall something after all.

“Black hair,” he murmured, face directed at the frame, “Dark eyes. Asian with a-…a soft smile and a button up shirt?”

To a “t” exactly who was looking back at them. It was staggering. Maybe it shouldn’t have been. He had come back eventually, after all, and hardly changed a bit besides a few gray hairs and some wear upon his face; this man was only about as old- when he came as Sammy’s first sacrifice to his lord- as Joey was when he sacrificed them all.

 _“Sammy!”_ she choked, the shock that thick in her throat, “How the _hell’d_ you-”

A grin of a different sort waiting for her as she turned to question her comrade, somehow both distressed and smug from a man behind broken glasses that matched the frame that almost crumbled in her fingers. Eyes weren’t there to flicker, but the empty sockets in his wet skull somehow conveyed the same thing.

A single, quiet laugh, and then the curve in his lips faded.

“That’s him.”

His head turned forward and down as the implication settled in, Sammy mourning something he didn’t know was lost. Just like Francine, he had no idea how important he was- what a mistake it had been to try to send the sheep to sleep.

And as he had before, he lifted up his hands in front of him with a different sort of disgust- what they did instead of what they were made of. They flexed minutely- humanly- with his revelation.

_“Henry.”_

Francine had allowed him to let go of her, but all the delicate worry she had remained. Another electrical shock from behind silhouetted her hair with a sputter and revealed her pupils moving over him up and down, and she knew she couldn’t ever say anything to quite make up for what was happening to him in this moment.

To occupy herself, her eyes then fell upon three more things. A very old woman in a wheelchair, quilt across her lap, a vase- no…that’s an _urn-_ and a page of paper with nothing on it but a black splatter.

It took a bit for her gaze to be caught by movement- Sammy’s fingers now instinctively, cautiously reaching for something she hadn’t noticed yet, and seeing it made her throat clench tighter and insides ache as if to prepare for the worst.

 _“Henry…!”_ she repeated, as that was the name on the tape smudged underneath his thumb.

Lamb and shepherd lifted their chins up, another spark in the distance lining their profiles, as they readied themselves to find company of another lost from the flock long, long ago.

The heavy _click!_ of when Sammy pressed the play button somehow felt worse than her flinch than before.

_…_

_…_

_…Static…_

…

…

 _…Static_ …

….

…

The expression froze upon her in a horror growing and growing with each passing second of white noise, making her face hurting worse than anything else her body had been subjected to in the time she had spent trapped and tortured here. She ended up gasping when she opened her mouth to swear in utter dismay only for it be interrupted by a voice.

And such great juxtaposition did it have to the happy man in the photo.

It began with coughing- gagging, even- as a man much older than when he had left the studio began to tell about his time here. Sometimes the audio was clear, sometimes it seemed decayed, like the ink around it was acidic and still working to hide the parts that stung most. The gaps ranged from a second to several and left their hearts feel empty with the reverb of the pipes and the machine that sung a strain with no words.

But it said enough.

“Boris-… Yeah, buddy, I-…glad you’re safe now too-… But-… The demon is-… have much time! Boris, Joey- Joey did this to you!-... Joey!-… I have to leave. Boris, listen!-… I found the door-…make a run for-… I don’t know what’ll happen, but I damn can’t stay here. Are…you with me, buddy?”

Her lip trembled at the clarity of these last words, having never heard his voice and maybe never hearing it again.

…A chuckle, soft and relieved. Its voice had waited a very long time to let go.

“Then let’s get out of here, Boris. You and I-”

He didn’t sound done by the way his tone sounded at the end of the tape, but there it was. The static returned as the recorder tried to play what wasn’t there, and so eventually a murky thumb pressed it to stop.

Only then did they notice that whatever else was sounding off had gotten louder…and louder…and louder.

Like a frog being boiled to death so very slowly, only now did they hear the **drips** were in the pipes around them and saw that the shadows around them had a familiar, splattering shape instead of an ordinary fade.

**Footsteps-**

Something lit up in Francine’s mind.

**Footsteps-**

She turned to Sammy, ready to burst at the seams.

**_Running-_ **

“Sammy!” She tugged hard at his arm to get him to face her, bringing his gritting teeth to her level. “Did Henry ever die?! _DID YOU MEET HIM IN THE PUDDLES?!”_

And from his gaping mouth came nothing.

The sound, instead, was screaming as something slammed into the metal door some ways behind them, the echo of it rattling the posters on the wall until they turned more and more yellow and curled at the edges like sickness made them grow old, and it turned the Borises to face the intruders to a sacred shrine.

And shortly after the scream- something so deep inside she wouldn’t have thought of it if fear didn’t jump it to the tip of her tongue. She clenched her fists and shouted to the heavens, praying to be heard-

_“JOEY!!!”_

Turns out something that the fellow by that name told her when they last met wasn’t a lie, after all. Even though the demon didn’t hesitate to hit the door over, and over, and over again till its middle started to cave and bend- even though the floor rattled and pipes began to burst their ink and spray at each other, staining the smiling toons and slinking to the floor in hopes to drown those inside…

Something _was_ different.

She _knew_ it.

_She believed._

“JOEY- JOEY _STOP!_ I JUST WANNA TALK! LET ME TALK TO Y-”

A hand covered her mouth, muffling another word as knuckles clenched around her jaw. Sammy didn’t understand what she was doing, but it _would_ get her killed, and he had spent every waking second preventing that as of late.

Turns out it wasn’t unplanned, shrieked with nothing else to do. With a groan, she threw his hand off, gripping the wrist tight as she could till her fingers felt numb. His hand was held between them, up in the air as everything felt like it was falling apart and she was going to _encourage_ it.

“Sammy- Sammy trust me- just _TRUST-”_

And then once again, she did the same as she had always done. Every decision she had made was answered not with a call…

…But with a fall.

The floorboards broke underneath her feet and she began tripping on things tumbling down right along with her. Despite asking for it, she shrieked again and reflexively tried to cling to her friend by her side. He did the same, his own shout filling the room as his entire self was thrown to try to save her. _Not again-_ so many times he failed her, _NOT AGAIN-!_

Through the cracks again in the homemade universe and through Sammy’s fingers alike, she fell, and he couldn’t see anything but the puddles down where Mr. Drew took her.

Joey hadn’t lied, because even though the studio listened to him, he listened to _her_ always. And sometimes, a reaction to a reaction is more than enough to change things for good. All in his hands, but not as if others have nothing to do with what he did.

Everything, in fact, had to do with others, and this she finally understood.

And once again, with a pathetic _clang!_ against the ground in the distance and the world ripping itself apart, Sammy was left alone with his god.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a heads up, guys, there's not many chapters left. Probably somewhere between 1-3. However, this won't be the end of the universe, and I'll probably have more to write on everything that happens after the story is done. I'll talk about it more in the future <3


	13. Hymn of the Dark Puddles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Pray without ceasing…”_ – 1 Thessalonians 5:17

Time gushes like a river, wrapping fate around obstacles and lifting determination over fields of distance. There are places that it has never touched, or that was washed over and pulled away long, long before, leaving behind beaches of memory and shells of emotions and magics of that time.

There are places that should have never been touched.

And places that have flooded because mankind was convinced they know better.

We call these places different things, in different cultures and different languages, but we’ve learned- collectively- to be _wary;_ be wary of the places where the riptides touch the trees, invisible in all but how the wind blows branches in such an uncanny way it can’t be real; be cautious of land where creatures of the deep be found, for surely they aren’t supposed to be here; don’t try to find the source of rivers, lest you get lost in the ocean.

And so fairy rings, demons, and destiny are left alone. We learned. We know better. Ancestors have left us books and tales and songs to prove it- that it has been done, and it should never be done again.

But reverence and appreciation so quickly become mistaken for utility with the subject of magic.

And so people died.

Just a man, Joey _believed_ he knew better. Joey _believed_ he was just. Joey _believed_ he could save if he called upon that which was bigger than he.

And now with the death of all he cared for, Joey, too, believed he deserved to die, as perhaps others before him did tampering with the thin, fragile veil of fate with reckless claws and fingers. As others did finding death was too easy to escape a rapture that had forgotten them.

But somehow, in an entirely new way, he still held faith all that he had before his own destruction, and its survival into purgatory created a world both at his mercy and a world asserting no such mercy upon him. And everyone he loved were subject to the whims and plans of an uncured apprehension to let go and allow things to be.

Men aren’t supposed to be God, let alone be fit to play one in this last story he’d ever pen in ink.

The swirling puddles were never still, never without agony. Francine knew that better than almost anyone else as she fell down, down, down through them once more. Their thick, runny sludge formed reaching hands and wailing faces as she fell past, having watched- or rather felt- her all this time beneath her feet and both wanted what she had and feared it’d all be stolen from her anyway as so many others did before. Being her second time among them, she had more awareness to notice the details of immortality. Her screaming was replaced by breathlessness, having never seen… _people_ in there before. This ink around her was made of _people._

But of course it was. The people were made of ink, down to the very soul, and so souls forged the form they took out of the only thing they had left to their name.

Even with no true up and down, Francine felt her hair being whipped in the fall, combed through almost as if the hands could reach her. A spotted face gasped just before something flew past her head-

A _thwap!_ of turning pages and the woman saw a book fly the other way, seeing that the floorboards above either were fixed or disappeared with only darkness that way. Something chased behind it, too, like glitter behind a shooting star- pale, brownish specs like flower petals falling from a dying cherry tree.

She couldn’t tell yet, hardly able to sense herself at all, but that was almost precisely what they were.

Taking in a loud inhale to calm while adrenaline pinched every nerve in her to scream, Francine then looked back down to see nothing waited below, either.

But one thing had gotten her this far. One thing would get her out.

“JOEY?!” she called for him again, her voice echoed and rippling in the souls around her, “JOEY, WHERE ARE YOU?!”

Francine’s eyes glanced wildly about for a response.

_Come on, Joey…you let her this far…-_

She swallowed, feeling the collar of her shirt whipping against her neck.

“JOEY!” the woman screamed again as she called back, instead, on memories. After all, he was always watching. He had always reacted. “JOEY, I KNOW YOU’RE _SCARED!_ I’M SCARED _TOO!”_ Another desperate gasp as she felt her breath being lost like someone punched it right out, feeling herself so close to hyperventilating, if she hadn’t already started. Her desperation was all that kept words pushing out empty lungs.

Sammy depended on her.

Norman did.

Alice did!

All these people- these were _people_ in the puddles! _Everyone!!!-_

“BUT WE- WE NEED TO TALK! _PLEASE! YOU LET ME THIS- YOU LET ME THIS-…”_

And the glistening nothingness all around her seemed blurred as her last words began drifting away, her own throat seeming to choke itself in fear. Francine’s plea for empathy as well her orientation in space left her all at once, and she felt herself tipping physically as she lost grip consciously. It was so much, too much, and it would all end _here?!_ Halfway to hell, dropping down to its gates without ever reaching it?! Is THAT what this was all for?! She was SO close, _so FUCKING close-!_

As a body going limp was tilted more upright to fall, one arm was lifted up above her head. Through dizziness, something brushed against her fingertips.

Instinctively, she gripped it with her remaining strength, a trust reciprocated as she found relief under her feet that then rested her on her side.

Time was a gush of water bursting where it shouldn’t, and she was the rock in the river that Joey had always been looking for. An angel could see her from the tides that swallowed her whole, and the puddles for the first time since remembered the hymn of a prophet that at one time tried in vain to convince the congregation that hope was worth looking for.

Sammy waited ashore and prayed God could have mercy, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the moment, the plan is that there will be somewhere between one chapter more to three, not depending on what I decide happens but rather that I know what happens and have yet to organize it.
> 
> I've had this in mind for a very, very long time. Thank you for your support <3


	14. A Rock in the River

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”_ \- 1 John 3:1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, here's more art I've gotten since the last chapter! Control started reading since the last chapter hehe, and Queen and Moonshadow0 have made some wonderful things too!
> 
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/183881623583/april-fools  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/184066196398/insane-control-room-sometimes-you-just-need-a  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/184067089328/so-i-decided-to-give-hymns-minion-me-her-own  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/184073118223/insane-control-room-francine-and-sammy-from  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/184084654383/insane-control-room-more-for  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/184112260403/insane-control-room-another-drawing-for  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/184130831378/almost-an-angel  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/184182099243/pipesflowforeverandever-i-actually-had-to-stop  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/184471559943/warning-impalement-pipesflowforeverandever
> 
> (NOTE: the last image of the above has a warning for impalement/violence.)
> 
> So...We're finally here. This is it. I've been writing this since October of 2017 and...we're here. Almost done, end within reach. I am...euphoric. Numb. Holy shit. 
> 
> I can't wait to show you everything I've been waiting for. Working for.
> 
> Thank you, Ace, for reading this 15 page monster as my beta reader. You're the best. <3

What sensation could have matched this?

**Drip.**

What horror? What…magnitude of godliness?

**Drip.**

_…Ungodliness_.

**Drip.**

Sammy heard the demon at the end of the hall, the loudness of the streams of ink rushing from the ceiling giving no hint as to if the beast himself was nearing or if it was only his darkness.

But what did it matter when it meant he was here all the same?

Indeed, that was true as with each lurching, dragged step, the ink demon approached from the end of the hall, light from the next room streaming onto his back. That horrible grin bleeding black from its teeth was barely lit by what made it past him, clearest when the wall sparked as his shoulders nearly brushed into exposed wires with his ragged, unstoppable march.

Even without sight, Sammy felt his eye sockets clench like they had lids to close shut. His melting spine threw itself against the wall behind him as his lord embodied everything his prophet feared about him instead of revered.

And so, despite that spark of a past life revitalized, Sammy knew all he could do was pray.

“My lord!” he choked out that well-worn plea. He had always pleaded for him in time of need, just one way or another. “Ink demon!” He didn’t even know what to ask for. What could he have, even? Francine was gone through the floor- evidently where he could not as he stamped his feet where she was surely _was_ and only found solid boards. Alice- he had hated her for decades and yet cared for her even longer- a long lost friend lost all over again, and for what?! A world falling apart in the clutches of a man that had known everything about him without sharing a single thing about himself.

…And yet he had shared all. The ink demon was always watching.

These things Sammy contemplated as somehow the shreds of meaning he had through his god were torn from his hands, left bleeding and empty. This god before him now, who had never given his seer the courtesy of even a single word, leaving him to find on his own all that he wanted…This being that Sammy could feel envelop him, dread and goosebumps like fingers clawing down his back, like poison in his lungs that made it hard to breath. A gasp, a gasp, and a gasp. Sammy raised his hands to his face, feeling his glasses skew with his desperate grasping- bouncing as his fists shook with each shallow bit of hyperventilation. He laid in wait, in the nightmare of a martyr, waiting for his deity- his cause- to surely kill him once more. It was then, wide-eyed and so, so afraid, that Sammy Lawrence finally asked himself something that had creeped upon him like the looming shadow of his master, step by step.

…Was his faith gone?

He fell to his knees, kneeling before a god that was there but that he didn’t know if he wanted to believe in anymore

_Was his faith gone?!_

The well was run dry, the everlasting flood of hope and dreams for something better, all dashed away as the one with promised came forward with none.

What else did he have left to do but rot away?

And it was like this, a man of ink so distraught he melted right onto the floor as he curled upon it and sobbed, that the creature he adored and despised stood over him and listened.

Sammy did not question why he paused.

 

* * *

 

A groan heaved itself out of Francine’s mouth, sight fading in and out as she grit her teeth with the intense discomfort. She had felt relief, though; she was no longer falling.

But where was she?

The woman lifted her head, seeing floorboards beneath her, her own hands shaking as they tried to raise the rest of her, too. Her stare stayed upon them just a second longer- just long enough for her eyes to shoot open and for her breath to be stolen as something reminded her that this time falling down was not like the others.

**Drip.**

Right in between her palms, splattering its darkness in tiny specs upon her skin. She let out a startled yelp, sitting up to see what was surely the most incredible thing this studio of wonders held in store for its visitors.

All around her, ink was falling down, down, down. Slinking from a black ceiling- a mass of liquid encircling her. She turned her chin up and followed the streak moving past, and she soon found there was a reason she hardly heard a plink of its hitting the floor.

_There was no floor._

She was laid upon the smooth portion of a wooden foundation ripped apart, jagged at the edges. Despite her weight, it did not tilt with the flail that inevitably came with her scream at such a discovery. It was floating- baseless- amid nothing, and as she grappled the edge tight in terror, her hair framed her face and dangled down with absolutely nothing beyond below.

Just black. Like it was the ends of the earth.

And she was so afraid.

The woman put a hand to her heart, feeling it beat faster than she could ever imagine, and wondering if Joey had led here just to die, she began to hyperventilate just as Sammy was at that very same moment. Her head turned every which way, and as if they came to calm her, she saw flickers of light- inexplicable, fuzzed orange.

Her shoulders heaved still, but her focus returned as she finally had something to keep her in place. Unwilling to stand up only to fall off, she crawled to the edge of her small island to look closer.

It reflected back in her squinting eyes and seemed brighter and brighter as its presence amid the void brought her steady.

It bloomed, it bent, and it withered.

…

…

“…Right,” she exhaled, a tremor in her voice. This wasn’t for no reason. Nothing had _ever_ been for no reason- she knew that now. Every step- every detail fabricated like a story written as she walked into it- was entirely purposeful.

Even if he didn’t know why.

And so with a gulp, Francine made herself stand up, watching the blankness around her and the ink swarming through it for what to do next.

She saw nothing more than her board and the candle, the latter who knows how far away.

There was only one thing left to do, and unlike every other time she had chosen to step where she didn’t want to, in this vast realm of darkness…she finally felt like she was supposed to be here.

She glanced up as if who she addressed was up in heaven.

“Joey?” Said softly, because she didn’t need to yell to be heard.

The woman with faith took in a breath and closed her eyes.

She lifted one foot and set for to put it past the wood beneath her.

…

One eye alone opened, twinkling as she saw a second board beneath it that wasn’t there before.

She exhaled.

“I’m coming, Joey.”

She clenched her fists and put her gaze back level with the flame that gave her hope.

“Just hang on and help me if you can.”

 

* * *

 

The demon was there to help, or so it was fated to. Whether or not that was the actual fruition of his existence had, of course, been long, long debatable. What kind of loving god watches idly by as his people rot away? Smiles as they drag half-severed body parts behind them as the will to live left them melting apart? That only lifts his chin up to the melody of anguish screamed and prayed as his kind begged to him for mercy if only in true death?

A _jealous_ god. One that through a world of pain found something justifying. How much did Joey hate himself, and how much did Joey believe he needed to _suffer._

A perpetuation that dragged everyone down with him the more he heard their hearts and bodies alike ache. Even the wisest ones of all can be the most ignorant; the most empathetic can have the least care about other’s feelings.

And what was the demon if not Joey’s contradictions, the keeper of this tossing, turning purgatory?

And so the beast watched, smiled, and lifted his chin as his most beloved prophet was pathetic on the ground before him once again, completely and utterly sobbing as he lost grasp of all that gave this man hope.

…Again, that is.

Below the demon, Sammy was no different than before. No different the other times he was afraid, even from the very beginning. As how close they were came to be known, Sammy squirmed back, gasping shouts of the utmost fear.

Not unlike when Bendy first held him by the shoulders and blinded him till he was pacified.

No, this was not unfamiliar to the old, dark spirit as in either condescendence or heavenliness, he merely stood over he who trusted him most of all, once again the weeping willow giving his shade, his **drips** like the gentle, withering cascade of the tree to descend all around Sammy Lawrence and shelter him from evils he could not unsee.

A pitiful welp, he was, in the presence of someone so _big,_ so _glorious!_ No wonder he learned to abide in the demon; who else could have such power, such care, such prestige for those of his everlasting kingdom? Joey had always been saddened to hear Sammy sing such gospels of dismay; he would rather give him something to believe in.

Whether or not the demon had consciousness to agree was irrelevant, as he regardless simply did as fate untethered had designed either way.

So just as before, as the shepherd without a sheep knelt among a room of wolves and wept for what was missing, his god reached over and took away what caused his distress, as any being of benevolence should.

Knowledge was to leave Sammy like wind carrying leaves off the branches one by one as the ink demon knocked the glasses right off his face.

 

* * *

 

Like a trail in a land of sprites encased in hidden magic, Francine toddled one step at a time through the darkness to chase a will-o-the-wisp promising something beyond. Arms stretched out for balance, she at first looked down to make sure there would be something beneath her at every step, but eventually concluded that the answer would always- imperatively- be yes- she was safe.

…Safe as she could be, traversing over the nothingness at the world’s end.

Might as well not make herself panic looking down at it.

She bent with her palms on her knees as the blur of distance finally left like a fog only when she drew especially close, it’s flame flickering like all the others before. The candle was simply…there- like a streetlamp or a lantern inside an inn to let you know its safe to rest here. She blinked at it, having expected more, but upon looking up again saw more of the same having suddenly apparated while she had glanced away. The fires of the candles were numerous, their soft smolder emanating a weaving path to follow. Upon squinting past the quickening drips of ink from above, she could see _something_ at the end.

Not a single question in her mind to follow it, and so she did.

Despite feeling more and more certain of the pattern of wood keeping her upright, with each candle she began to feel worry on top of worry. The ink was, indeed, falling faster every time they caught her eye, and she was starting to see other things, too, as she neared whatever waited for the her up ahead. Pages, and inkwells, bits of cutouts- the demon’s smile still gracing a visit even as it was ripped apart-…wait.

As one stream fell past the woman’s shoulder, something plummeted beside it, its tip slathered with the murky liquid but still light enough- and light colored enough, like candlelight itself- to be readily noticed.

…A flower petal, just like the ones in Joey’s vase.

It make her breath shake even more, somehow- so out of place, not anywhere else in this whole studio before- and it turned out to be rightfully so as she turned her head back forward to see she had finally reached the door at the end of this abyss, nothing to its left nor its right but surely something within beckoning for just her.

With dying brown vines with withered yellow leaves wrapped around it, Francine opened the last gate as Joey allowed the girl into his soul.

 

* * *

 

Sammy heard the _tink!_ of his spectacles hit the floor, mouth gaping and head crooked after the demon swiped so viciously at him. He heard the splatter of what was surely his own liquid flesh hit the surfaces around him, and the prophet felt numbness wash over the spirit inside him.

His mind, for the longest moment, was left blank.

…

…

…

Face vacant of any protection- of any way to cover up what he always hated about himself- he turned his chin up to the ink demon, the being that wished to grant him the bliss of faith without the wretchedness of a past life getting in the way

Four fingers reached up the side of his head, nothing crossing his temples to get in the way, to encase thoughts back into his mind.

His lip trembled, an exhaled gasp shaking with it in its release.

 _“You…”_ the prophet could hardly speak, sockets trembling in his skull, too.

Those fingers balled into fists. Something was missing, and it left him hollow. It was the weakest, quietest utterance in his whole life.

His hands lowered, limp on his lap.

“You…” the man slowly began to comprehend, “You… _took them…!”_

Complete disbelief.

…But then suddenly the dents in his head narrowed, and it was not awe that was within his eyeless gaze but a deep, uncovered fury.

“Those are _MINE!!!”_

A last straw, the demon’s attempt to sooth and control failed. Sammy shouted and leapt past his former saint to grab what was rightfully his. The demon’s expression didn’t waver, but his aura surely did.

Sammy Lawrence from then on would always remember who he was, what he wanted, and what he was waiting for, and no one had the right nor ability to control him for another second.

As the man dived for the broken glasses, they tangled only in his fingers for a second before he felt himself thrown violently away, a poster tearing Bendy and Boris in two behind his back. The man grimaced, hands clawing the surface behind him as he heard his lord’s pained, hoarse breath get faster and faster- the drips more and more present- and maybe even the ground itself tilt back like the whole hall was being rattled in someone’s hands.

This was when he knew it was the beginning of the end.

 

* * *

 

The door, despite existing, tried to fight against her touch, the things wrapped around it having to crack apart as she gripped the doorknob tight and shoved her weight to break it open.

“Come- ON-” Her grunt devolved into a shriek as it finally gave way, unprepared to catch herself from falling.

But what a good thing she still managed to.

Francine’s arms flailed, gripping onto the edge of the door to hold herself to it as instead of another platform made for her, something else came forth instead.

 _Someone_ else.

It was like a storm in slow motion, in impossible directions in impossible ways. Boards of wood torn from their foundations swung in the air; candles had their flames sweep far, far further than such little wicks should reach- like whips of yellow, red, and orange that curved along with the invisible hurricane; books and ripped papers and so, so much of Bendy- his visage thrown about as toys, pictures, and in flickers of cartoon projections shooting across from their projections, somehow visible without a still flat surface.

And the plant stems on the door, dead and like straw, were still so very alive. Like dendrites of a cell, they crawled around the chaos in a gigantic sphere- encasing it. Keeping it separate, untouchable.

Both to contain and keep out. No wonder it didn’t want her in.

Still did not.

Francine’s feet tripped underneath her as her trance was broken, the thin, hollow straw strong enough to nearly shut it on her fingers. She yelped, managing to fumble back on the other side of the door’s knob the desperately bring herself upright.

Beneath her fingers, she both saw and felt the vines shudder like they had a sense of touch, and she witnessed this tremor travel down and away. Her eyes followed, and she finally acknowledged him.

The sight of him made her eyes wide, brow curled and mouth gaping once more with a doleful gasp as she bore witness to a man that was never supposed to be found.

Joey stood upon nothing- he merely was left in the air, center of the massacre and focus of the disarray. He was so…pathetic in his great, great power; knees were pulled into his chest; one hand was wrapped around himself as if he was afraid he’d spill apart; another covered over his face.

She couldn’t see his face as he curled up like a lost child, and she saw the deceased flowers wrap and grow around him, sprouting blooms already brown and thin with age over and over again as they grew so fragile they fell away to join the wind. Her eyes did not deceive her- they held a glow and like the Adlewood tree released its dark, toxic sap. The ink glittered in yellow radiance as the runny shadow slid onto the old father’s skin and dyed his cream suit with more and more of his sins.

It was horrifying, but it confirmed her suspicions about the nature of his control.

Those stained petals drifted past her face, nearly indistinguishable from the pages that flew around, too.

“Joey?”

At first soft, quiet and said more so in shock than to be heard. His silence, though, created the latter.

“JOEY?!”

Nothing happened.

She realized, then, that he had taken her this far, but there’s only so much he knew to do when they finally approached what hurt him most of all.

Her eyes glanced all around, at the remnants of things he loved like shattered memories thrown about in the distress of his own mind.

And at realizing this was what he left for her to use, she called for him one last time as the woman backstepped once before jumping right in.

 

* * *

 

Sammy was hit one more time as he made another blind reach for his glasses, hearing them skid down the hall. He skid after, but not by choice. As he hit the floor once again, the blow upon him seemed, too, to direct gravity; the other side of the room fell and he slid right along with it. Another grunt as he met its end, feeling other objects behind his back and by his sides. Panicked, he threw things aside as soon as he found they weren’t what he wanted back, hearing the stomp of his god come closer and closer.

Why did he want them so badly to defy his lord?

But more importantly, why did his lord want to take what was not his?

Those glasses were…everything, in a way. They made him _human._ They triggered Sammy to realize he was _human._

No wonder he was still crying out at the idea that he whom he trusted in was trying to take that away.

The musician screamed as he was picked up and thrown by the arm, yet again tossed about like a ragdoll.

“Why?!” he managed, “WHY?!”

He dared to raise his head, his soma dripping onto the wall and to the floor to join the aura and body of his master.

“WHY CAN’T I HAVE THIS?! _WHY WON’T YOU LET ME HAVE THIS?!”_

The ink swallowed over the pile of things, the useless glasses appearing in his massive ungloved hand. Whether or not he was distracted as his eyeless gaze fell upon him was uncertain, but it gave Sammy enough time to pick himself back up.

No, having not seen the demon do this, it was nothing but his own fury at the leviathan’s silence and cruelty that made Sammy throw himself at his lord, ready to fight for what he had left.

 

* * *

 

Francine cried out, too, as there is nothing else one can do with the sensation of throwing oneself off the cliff, to feel your stomach flip over and over with the freefall and the sensation of wind striking past your hair and right between your ears.

For a split second, she began to have an idea that this was a terrible, terrible mistake. Her jump wasn’t nearly as far as intended- if any forethought went into such a stupid act at all- and her weight began to be redistributed, her body tilting as time passed in the tumble. But then, she grimaced; something tore into her stomach as they crossed paths, the sound of her shirt ripping clear as day as a sting came from the same place.

But every moment of pain is an opportunity, perhaps, and so with another shout she grappled what hurt her and held on for dear life.

Francine had never, ever, had so much strength in her weak body as she managed to crawl onto the piece of driftwood floating in space, a second of refuge in a hurricane. Even her eyelids trembled with the adrenaline as she directed her look down. She couldn’t see past her own chest to wherever the wound was, but perhaps that was a good thing- meant it wasn’t that big. Even though it was in a similar spot, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the pain in her abdomen when Sammy found her for the first time.

Her locks blew into her eyes with the gust of this storm, but she could still see past them a way to that old man.

She reached her arm forward and clung to the next thing that came by, dragging herself closer and closer as many times as need be.

 

* * *

 

_Of course he was no match for the ink demon._

-First, merely a shove away, like Sammy was a child trying to fight an adult keeping away a dangerous thing he mistook for toy-

_But that wasn’t the point, was it?_

-Then, as Sammy merely came forward again, his savior swiped him aside entirely, that giant white glove more than enough to move the man like a fly. He picked himself right back up-

_It wasn’t a fight to win. It just wasn’t. What the demon had…was simply his._

-Instead of going for the beast again, Lawrence tried to judge by sound alone in a swarm of noise and carnage and things always moving where the ink demon’s black hand could be. He charged in, and he missed, barreling past instead, leaving himself vulnerable for the monster to take him by the shoulder and toss him at his feet. The ink in Sammy’s back conjoined with the pool made by his lord, puddles whispering in his ears-

_The demon took what was not his._

-Sammy clung to the hand holding him down by its wrist, gritting his teeth. He reached up for his glasses again, but nothing met his touch-

_Joey took everything that did not belong to him in the first place- everything. Sammy finally wanted something back._

 

* * *

 

Francine was finally close enough she could almost touch him, but the object she clung onto was fast on its way away. With one last yelp, she hoisted herself over to Joey himself- reaching out without knowing if he’d drag him down too- and the sensation that came with that was nothing but extraordinary.

All the woman had to do was hold his shoulders, and the weightlessness about him…came about her.

She felt the bottom of her shirt lift up the tiniest bit, showing the blood that had begun to stain the dull blue cloth. Her feet needed no support, and her legs kicked slowly like they waded through water. She couldn’t see it, but the slight, golden aura about him in that second outlined her too, her strands of hair going from being whipped about to being gently tugged up and down, much like his locks from underneath his hat.

Another thing unnoticed is that the blooms that choked from his head to his shoes seemed to drift more towards hers, too.

“Joey!” His name, dumbly said one more time as she waited for him to react. But nothing came. His hand was on his face, and there it remained. He would not look back.

“Hey, hey HEY-”

She gripped tighter, nearly on the verge of tears. No. No, he _had_ to be able to hear her, he HAD to! After all this-!

Just as he was about to give up, she tilted her head past the shadow of his top hat’s brim, and through his hiding fingers she should see trembling, glowing eyes.

_They were so afraid._

She shook him in her hold, her own illuminated gaze fixated on his until Joey chose to return it.

And slowly, slowly…they did. Honey irises glinting with a power beyond his own met hers; they were so wide, so hardly there with her as everything was falling apart.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, more horrified than ever before. Her heart sunk again as he again looked down into the darkness below, the ink streaming slowly from the weeds caressing around his hand. “After everything I’ve done…nothing. I could do nothing.”

Mr. Drew blinked, some of the liquid on his forehead tricking down.

“All these years…and I could never do a _single_ good thing after all…!”

His eyes closed.

“I was wrong. So very, very wrong. But you already know that.”

Eyes half-lidded, staring at nothing.

“I was never, never faultless at all. I’ve never done anything right. _I’ve never-”_

_“JOEY!”_

Eyes wide open, looking at her.

Her expression, in spite of a fear matched between them, was stern. Francine furrowed her brow and glared; none of that was going to help them. Drew had literal decades to roll around in his own misery- heaven help her if she let him whine a another, single fucking moment, God almighty.

She had lost too damn much and had to suck it all up for him to pity himself a second more.

His hand fell from off his face, returning to his legs to hold himself. He was really, truly, childish, and they couldn’t afford him to be.

The phone in her pocket may have been weightless, but what was inside was far too heavy to leave behind.

She jerked him one more time by the shoulders, as if it would wake him up. The woman shook her head side to side before beginning to not plea…but to convince.

“Listen,” she began again, “…You can let us _GO!”_

And the old man whose winkles on his face came from laughter long ago rather than age had them carve even deeper with a frown that reached glittering eyes. He shook his head right back, the kind of look when someone tries to convince their daughter someone just died and they won’t be coming back.

“I can’t…!” he squeaked. All that confidence, all that grandiosity and sureness… _gone._ He was a shell, and his contents were breaking open and spreading all around her and out of reach. “I’ve _tried,_ dear, I could never-”

Francine allowed him to touch her face one more time, a lingering, barely touching caress of the cheek that did not last.

“…I’ve hurt you,” Joey admitted, maybe for the first time with sincerity, “I’ve hurt everyone. _So many people, Frankie-!”_ Another hopeless, hollow shake of the end, vines wrapping around him more and tighter- one coming over Francine’s right hand. “I can’t save them _._ I never could. I tried- and it all only became… _worse.”_

She saw both his hands gradually let go of himself to feebly come to her own fingers, begging for something without knowing what.

_“I can’t let anyone go.”_

And this… _this_ was why Francine was here, and this is why Joey had allowed her to find him. Like all the times before, he contradicted himself; he both fought for her and against her presence.

Now she knew why.

“…Joey.”

She pulled her hand out of his grasp to instead cup his own cheek.

_“You already have.”_

The disbelief in his expression had no words, and her palm felt his jaw drop into it.

“No-” Mr. Drew retained a grip of his version of reality, “No, no, dear- please- _please_ don’t say that…!” Terror tinged his voice, as he knew only bad things came from hearing such distressing things. “I haven’t- I _can’t-_ Frankie, darling, _please_ believe me-!”

But his emotions didn’t sway her; her gaze stayed firm and she kept herself still.

“You can’t control what you want, can you?”

Such a simple statement. Secret upon secret, this was the last thing he didn’t want anyone to know.

It was true.

“No,” he returned with hardly a sound, “Never. This studio…reacts to me. It does not obey.”

His eyes begged for mercy as he confessed his worst sin.

“I can’t stop myself from hurting everyone.”

Tears welled up, absorbing the golden fade about them, twinkling like stars as she stroked her thumb and broke them apart to fall across his face and beneath stained, shining glasses.

And then she told him a secret she realized too.

“But you can!”

And something intended for hope only made him more terrified.

“No, NO! Frankie, _STOP-”_

“You HAVE! Joey- Joey _LISTEN!”_ Francine tilted his face back towards her, having tried to look away as his only means of escape. Both hands cupped his face now, making the ancient soul look her in the face. She repeated what had to be true again, calmer and certain it was key to their deliverance:

“You let Henry go.”

And everything around them- every splinter, thread, and bead of ink- it all froze in place at the drop of a pin. His hands came again to hold her wrists, and he took an eternity to swallow what she had dared to utter.

_“…Why would you ever say something like that?”_

 

* * *

 

The room tipped upside down, he could tell. The sensation of being turned around was known to all that were in the puddles, twisted together like they were stirred in a cauldron. Ink sloshed around him, like a ship at sea filling with the waves that are bringing it down. He groaned, but the nightmare of a spinning tempest in a locked room- electricity sparking behind his shoulders from bare wires- was nothing compared to the force coming after him.

He skidded on the floor as his lord tried to pin him to it.

But Sammy- by heaven’s grace- felt the ink demon’s grip weaken, and he rolled to his side, releasing himself from whatever wrath was coming his way. Francine…whatever she was doing-

The thought was broken as he began heading to the other side of the hall again, identified because he could hear sparks from the metalworks around him that his dear friend mentioned before. Instinctively- or perhaps catching the sound of a sharply raised fist- the man ducked, still grazed by the demon’s hit but not facing its full brunt. He took the opportunity to return it with a punch of his own, feeling knuckles land somewhere on the behemoth before he was tossed back yet another time.

The director managed to skid to a halt instead of simply hit a wall again, and as he gasped for breath, he could hear the tingle of electricity right behind his back.

The altar for Joey’s son wasn’t too far away.

 

* * *

 

“Because it’s true!” Francine insisted, “Listen- it’s the only thing that makes sense! If Henry isn’t here- I mean, _I_ haven’t seen him- then where the hell is he?!”

Mr. Drew stayed silent at the mention of his son. He closed his eyes once again.

“The puddles,” he admitted softly, knowing how they were the most wretched place of all, “There’s nowhere else.”

“Joey?”

Nothing. She continued.

“Have you ever…-” _Delicately. Be careful._ “-…Tried to find him?”

Francine’s apprehension…was entirely justified.

 _“OF COURSE NOT!”_ he snapped much louder than before, Francine gasping at the anger in his eyes. Just like that, the whirlwind that stood still came back with strength anew, starting to throw things around once again, a match for his outrage at such an accursed accusation- an afront to everything he worked for. “Why would I, after all I’ve _DONE?!_ Why would I do that to him?! _Why would my son want to see me?!”_

The woman felt her heart race and Joey tense in her hands. She shouldn’t have been so surprised he didn’t want to see the truth. All she could offer was another question, hope that it was enough:

“…Have you ever thought to ask?”

And it was almost like this bit back and him, his head jerking up at these words and the ire in his eyes burning right her way.

…Doubt. It was flickering in his gaze, too, right alongside. And so she asked another thing of him, even as she sat precariously in the eye of the storm with brutality unlike any other.

“Just… _try,”_ she proposed, trying to hide the desperation just below the surface. “Please-” And then, what she prayed would convince him: “I- I- want to know. Please.”

His teeth were still grit, his expression was still flabbergasted at the abominable idea…but the doubt grew…and grew…and grew, until his eyes twitched now with a more tender confusion instead of rage.

But of course. She had always been able to get his guard down.

…

Joey Drew sighed and squeezed Francine’s hands as he closed his eyes to look for what was left of dear Henry, if only to convince her that he was gone and nothing more could be done. The girl that so painfully- wonderfully- reminded the father of his son was left to watch and wait, the only indication of his efforts found upon his face.

And what a journey it took her on.

He eventually calmed, expression flat as he focused only on the pursuit. Then, he too became more...invested; Joey was hardly looking before- ready to flee the moment he caught the slightest sign of him- the son he was afraid to see after all he did...like everyone else, or even worse; he wanted to hide from the one he loved the very, very most. Like...walking and walking until you expect the earth to end- But...but...-

The frown and curled brow told Francine a lot more than words could, but she still let him search until satisfaction- or lack thereof- all the same so he could speak.

_“…Where…-?”_

His irises shined once again, horror of another kind entirely within them; so different, it is, the assurance of something awful than the lack of that promise can be.

“Mr. Drew, listen.” Francine pulled him closer, tilting her head with a similar sort of amazement. “I…I don’t know where your son is. I don’t know why-… _why_ you said he- he died. Why you said you saw him die.”

She leaned in so very close.

“But he _can’t_ have died here,” she murmured.

His grasp on her weakened as the world swung around, the best news- a revelation! Salvation!- still shredding through him like the sharpest knives.

_“You let him go.”_

And then he let go entirely, all that was left to connect them being her touch alone. He looked ahead, but who knew what on earth he could be seeing. But the woman didn’t waste time bringing him back to why she was here.

“Joey… _you CAN let us all go.”_

His limp hands were met as she moved hers off his cheeks to hold them. How the hell how Joey could let them go wasn’t visible to her…but it was _possible._

He _could._

She knew he could, and now…

So did he.

The fragile, frail plants continued to stretch and fade over and over again around them and from him, a waltz of life and death much like the existence of those he killed. The fires of the candled wrapped around their sphere like the trails of comets- of clouds lit by the evening sky-…no one had ever seen the sky in years. Like shattered glass, what was left of his existence was painted around them in moving color, impatient for something to change.

…His grimace stretched, and as the old man began to cry, Francine pulled him into her embrace and held Joey Drew as close as she could, having nothing else to offer but prayers that he would set them free.

“Please,” she asked of him.

Sammy stood ready for something he could finally do to save himself.

_“Please.”_

The demon leapt to his death.

_“Please, I want to see my family again.”_

And limp in his hold, at first nothing happened. But little by little, he began to hold her back, and then rest his head into her shoulder, and then gripped even tighter. The world did just the same. Past his red hair, Francine could see those jagged boards swing like knives, and she saw the flowers around them- around her, growing alive and trying to take her along with him- bloom, bend, and wither over and over faster and faster, their petals releasing and filling the air like smoke. She heard a rumble and the ink flew more like rain than ever before, sharp against her skin.

It got so violent she just closed her eyes and waited for some sort of end to come.

And at the same time, with the wolf’s room quaking all around him, Sammy jumped to the side just as the demon came in for the final blow.

He could hear the electricity shoot through his god from the torn wires, the bare wounds of a universe aching inside out as it conflicted with the creature of pain and control that it was supposed to contain.

Joey was dead.

He was the ink demon.

He was even God.

But for the first time, he saw he always had a choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not the last chapter, in case you didn't guess that yet.


	15. The Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”_ – 1 Corinthians 15:55

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cried a few times writing this, so here's some Emotions because I'm feeling a lot.
> 
> The support from you guys has been completely and utterly impossible. All the kudos, art, comments, fucking hell man I even got essay analysis about it. It means...SO SO much to me. My life is sincerely *different* because of this- because of YOU. This story has been utterly cathartic; it was started as a self insert because I wanted to validate my enjoyment for a specific character and to allow myself to daydream what it'd be like to meet him- to, furthermore, convince my kid self that did this very thing to cope with my problems that it's okay to like characters, and that I don't have to romanticize abuse and toxicity. I- sincerely- wrote this at first for me and about me, and then i realized I was willing and wanting to share this part of myself with others and be proud of the fact I picked up writing again for the first time in seven years.
> 
> And for then you guys came in, and you supported me and said the dang nicest things I've ever heard.
> 
> So this chapter is dedicated to us both. I made a story with the ending I wanted, and I got to share it with people willing to hear it.
> 
> Thank you, especially, to my friends, and especially Ace. You beta read this, listened to my ideas and made this story what it is, and you were the first person to support and believe in me in doing this. You're the best and I love you so much. Your direction was irreplacable, and this wouldn't be the story I wanted if not for you and your guidance.
> 
> This story would not exist today if it were not for my friends. You are all so loving and supportive, and I want you to know you made my life better. I'm glad I could give you at least this in return. I love you.
> 
> I do not believe this to be the end. I plan on indulging more writing about this AU in the future. A new beginning, you may say. About what happens after, probably.
> 
> But *this* story...is done. 
> 
> (OH, and as a heads up, **if you haven't read What's Not Yours yet, you should definitely do it before reading this chapter.** )

_And one petal fell._

_Then another._

_And another._

Their gentle, papery colors were tinged by warm hues their past home did not know. The fires of candlelight can only spread so far into the heavens. It was the colors of the sun itself now, painting richness only seen before with the splashes of life people brought into the studio that latched upon their backs and in their hands.

The life it sucked grey was let go, and everything lost was set free.

A broken pair of glasses, twisted and cracked, rested in wait. Fingers reached to them in new light, new texture, and tugged _once…- twice…- thrice…-_ until they were gently pulled out of sight and into its palm.

 

* * *

 

Francine was in a sacred place.

The woman laid down once more, on her side as a breeze played with her hair after missing its touch for far too long. Her blue shirt was unstained, the maroon jacket tied around her waist untarnished, and her backpack was placed around her shoulders without a spot left on its pins and pink design.

Both ink and bloodshed disappeared.

She squeezed her hand with a groan into whatever was underneath it, the feeling not yet familiar as she felt things fall between her fingers, delicate and compliant with a bizarre, waxy texture. The bag was weighted and shifted with the movement, and something tall and light tickled the woman’s nose as she began to pick herself up-

Lost breath as she realized she was alone. He’s gone, _he’s gone-!_

…Joey may have been gone- ripped from her arms by the universe- but as Francine rose from the flowers like it was all a dream, there was so much more waiting ahead that there was no way she could hold it all at once, even with empty hands.

With daisies and dandelions and violets at her heels, Francine gaped just a moment before she sprinted to the end of the hill where she was gently set down. Gasping for breath, she only lost it all over again as the horizon came forth and allowed her to see what was truly the promised land.

Francine was silhouetted by the rising dawn as the studio was gone- simply gone- and the vastness before her was so full and vibrant that maybe it didn’t even exist until JDS died and let wildflowers grow over its grave.

And it was like buds in spring that people below in the fields surrounded by running water and stretching trees rose up from the earth, alive again.

_Ink and bloodshed…disappeared._

Just as they were before Mr. Drew took them as his own, she saw not a single black speck upon these people made of flesh- left with their clothes, hair, and all else just like before the ink ate them away.

Some were on their knees, staring at their hands in utter silence, looking at the scars on their skin and asking themselves if those were there before.

Others leapt their feet and were screaming up at sunrise and its dyed clouds, feeling real once again with tears streaming down their face as they saw God and walked through hell to tell about it.

And others still had opened their eyes and thrown themselves in embrace at the first person they could see, and no one denied any other.

No one saw Francine as she saw them, observing their humanity until it carved unknown names into her bones. Button-up shirts, and poodle skirts, and baseball caps, and high-waisted jeans; many, many people from times past, both long, long ago and hardly before her at all. They all came to die- and they did. So they did.

And perhaps so did she.

…

But.

Here they all were, filled past the brim with life like a pitcher poured passion in their veins even as they overflowed and spilled into the world everything that couldn’t stay inside.

And numb with a hundred lifetimes spun three times over, all she could do was make it to the bottom of her perch to be level with them, petals stuck in her hair and the masses of lost souls wailing and sobbing at being alive once again. A quivering hand rising to her mouth, she was too overwhelmed even to cry, but she made herself look because it was what they all were owed- to be seen as they once were, the night sky turning pink and yellow and blue for the coming day, watercolors filtering over the green earth and upon what was taken- returned to it again.

Something caught her eye. A butterfly, much disrupted by the arrivals, made its leave in fluster and fluttered past Francine’s nose. She watched it blink in and out with each delicate flap as it weaved ahead, and Francine lost sight of the creature, leaving her to stare at two in particular out of the multitudes. Like in a trance, she was drawn forward, unnoticed among the many as they discovered themselves once more.

She was just one of them, too, after all.

There was a woman with auburn hair and bright, glossy eyes. She mouthed someone’s name as she touched his cheek. Fair, young skin of a hand reached for the dark and old of a liverspotted face. Francine saw how the hand hovered, its fingers twitching in place as they were afraid to touch- or were waiting until something told them they could. The woman left her lips parted, her profile looking up at the one she waited upon. He returned the look with one different- wide eyed but with nothing but neutrality.

Francine saw she was afraid he didn’t remember, and just as she resigned to begin pulling her fingers and pulling away-

…The observer felt her heart jump as the gentleman took the girl’s hand tight into his, kissing its knuckles before pressing it into his face. She said his name again in a shout as she threw the rest of herself at him in the tightest hug human muscles could muster, fully returned. One father figure let her down, but this one never would.

Francine stood there, holding her hands up near her chest, tender and unsure if she should watch, before lurching forward with a yelp. Someone in the crowd accidentally- or perhaps even purposefully as they were overjoyed- shoved her from behind and left her to tumble. She felt herself stumble and closed her eyes in case she landed on her face-

A soft, “oof!” came close to her ears with a blunt impact, and she felt something solid keeping her upright instead.

Francine opened her eyes to find herself caught in the arms of this person, slightly shorter than her with curls at the ends of her hair. Her lips were painted red, parted once again like she wanted to speak but didn’t know what to say, and she was simply wide eyed and staring at the person she rescued like she was a ghost.

A smile inched awkwardly across Francine’s face. The other girl must be in shock from all this, just like her. She still felt her heart racing, glance flickering to the black man watching with much the same look and the then back to the white woman with her face so close. She didn’t like to stare, but she couldn’t help it- noticing half the woman’s face looked…well, _rough._ Injured, maybe burnt sometime before all this.

…She was super pretty.

“…H.”

Another twitch of a grin as Francine remained tense in her grip. A hand went to her face, and she noticed that this person’s nails were painted too.

“…Hey.”

…

Wait.

She looked familiar-

Whatever was on Francine’s mind left with the wind as the girl did what she had begun to dream to do only a short time ago. With her first moment of being who she really was, Susie Campbell caressed her friend’s face with her own hands, stars still barely in the sky as sunlight broke in rays, and a seraph finally kissed her beloved cherub.

If she had lost her breath- if she had felt her heart jump out of her chest before- it was nothing like this.

Francine’s eyes kept wide and she felt goosebumps raise one by one on and hair raise at the back of her neck, but at the other woman’s touch- soothing…adoring… _longing-_ she finally felt herself relax and she kissed her right back, inexperienced but grateful and oh so very on fire with the daylight kissing warm onto their skin right alongside.

Someone played with the other’s hair on a whim and made them giggle, leading the other girl nothing to do but giggle, too, into her mouth. Soon, both of them were laughing at the top of their lungs, holding each other’s shoulder’s and pressing foreheads into each other as they snuck in more pecks all over their faces, bubbling over with everything the fear of death doesn’t allow you pay mind to.

_No more._

Susie opened an arm in welcome for another and Norman Polk abided, running into the two with a big, big grin and holding them tight in the embrace of a grandfather.

The loudness of the three was contagious, or at least the world seemed louder as they cheered with joy too.

_They were alive._

And Francine screamed along with the rest of them until she felt like her soul was going to hop out of her chest.

But it was some time into this moment, being rocked back and forth in Norman- Susie called her Norman- so… Damn! _That_ was _Norman!-_ and with a woman that before that refused to so much as shed a tear crying into her chest…

…That was when Francine raised her head at the bluing sky and felt her smile fade.

Wordlessly, she delicately pushed herself out, head turning every which way, a hand to her heart and worry in her eyes.

Susie could hardly say the first syllable of her name before the sheep ran off to find her shepherd.

Elbows gently pushed past the others around Francine as she peeked over every shoulder, searching every face. Giving a concerned grimace to the projectionist, Susie grabbed him by the hand and they followed.

Susie wasn’t sure if she wanted to see Sammy again, but that wasn’t as important as not leaving the woman she loved alone yet again.

_“Sammy?!!”_

Francine contorted her face into ten different frowns as she called for him and got nothing back. The noise around her wasn’t helping, either. With the other two just a few steps away, she dashed towards another corner of the dip in the valley and skid to a halt, rising to the tips of her toes and humming with dismay.

It was here that the crowd was finally thin, where those that were aware enough to want solitude took their friends or themselves alone and sat in sunset-colored poppies to think.

Brow furrowed, she glanced more distantly and saw one person farthest ahead, someone at the lead of the congregation as they sang hymns of their heaven, mumbled recognitions of mercy without knowing what was next.

She saw a man with brown skin, overalls, and a tuft of hair towards the front of his head put broken glances on his face and turn towards Francine with his chin up to the sky.

“Francine?”

She saw dull eyes widen with his voice, and so she screamed his name again and ran all the rest of the way. Francine didn’t stop even when she got to him; Sammy Lawrence lost his breath and grunted sharply with the impact as he was tackled but not allowed to fall down, she gripping him tight and then him doing the same for her, leaning back and forth with the momentum as they worked to keep each other balanced. His hold at first was out of necessity, but as she repeated the name that truly, truly belonged to him, he wrapped her tight and listened.

He didn’t know what else to do, being given everything he prayed for all these years with the death of his god. But love requires a sacrifice, doesn’t it? That’s one way to put it.

He didn’t want to think about that right now anyway.

And so with birds tweeting and blooms swaying with the spring morning, they and Francine’s friends watched as Sammy tilted his head down into her hair, rocking back and forth, her eyes clenched shut and his softly looking past her and into the everything surrounding them.

But it could have never been long before she wanted to see the person that had walked with her this whole time. The music director felt her pull back and gasped, but she kept her hands on his forearms and squeezed in assurance.

_He was so young._

She reached a hand up and held his face, seeing his lips quiver. She gave him a grin, but still, he did not change. She tried again, and added:

“It’s okay!”

What was okay in particular, she had no idea, but it didn’t matter. It was all okay now, regardless.

And that was enough, finally making Sammy smile back, and in turn it made her beam.

 _“You have such a nice smile…!”_ A giddy exclamation, her voice on the fringe of sobbing and crying. Instead, she bounced up and down in place and bit her bottom lip as it began to grimace with threatening tears. Thankfully, Sammy seemed to understand, and he just smiled wider.

Then, the man chuckled. Somehow, his voice was both the same and…different. No telling if it was an imagined difference, one from the moment, or one that would stay with him forever. It helped her return to a real, unrestrained smile, too.

“Good to hear.”

And again, something about that…Something about how he said it…It made Francine’s expression drop.

She became silent, the sounds of nature filling the quiet as the woman studied the man’s face.

It was, indeed, human. She stroked his cheek, feeling his skin- _skin!-_ beneath her fingertips. His lips pulled back further, nervously showing a bit more teeth. Her second hand released from him- making his expression flicker and brow furrow in wait-…and it did not change even as it hovered near his other eye.

Sammy’s eyes weren’t dark like they were in the photo, but light and rather grey.

Susie observed this from a distance, half of her face disfigured even though it wasn’t before the ink. Others around them now, too, often had big scars or even a missing body part, and it was hard to ignore.

Francine put together what everyone else already knew; she found it rude to ask the now obvious, and so instead she did the least she could do.

She described his face again, one inch at a time. It was wonderful, but the best thing of all was to be free from the ink and feel the wind comb his hair once more, never alone again.

 

* * *

 

It was a good, long time before she looked up, up to the sky. The clouds were puffy and perfect like she remembered they could be. She blinked. One seemed to move faster than the others, a spot of white among the bright backdrop that dashed away.

As Susie and Norman finally approached, Francine looked on a moment with a soft smile as they and Sammy had their moment, backstepping…backstepping…-

She had hoped they didn’t notice her running off, but they would.

The wanderer climbed up the hill’s path, and for the first time it was evident to her that this place wasn’t untouched by humanity after all. No, as her hand grazed past the old wood that helped her find her way forward, she saw it had been here for a long time, washed over and over again by rain and sunk into the ground- like the railing had once been much taller but mother nature was gradually taking it back.

The horizon came forward once more and her eyes widened with more there in wait.

And just as she came, a yelp rang out from something scared, and it scampered out of sight. It was just a second of pause before she gave solemn chase, half-running the rest of the way up with her lips pursed with concern.

The knoll leveled out, leaving her in tall grasses with morning glories and hollyhocks and more and more she couldn’t name. They and the moss crawled up a stump shaped like it was the throne for a fairy king, her ankle brushing its overgrowth and uncovering a name carved into the wood without her notice, even as morning drew dripped where she could feel its touch.

A cottage was up ahead, something like it was out of a storybook as she waded through the weeds and gawked at a rooftop filled with moss and vines that curled into each and every nook in the brick walls. The windows were unbroken, but almost looked it from all the spiders that wove their webs.

She came to the door and it creaked open, and she saw someone inside the place that was once his home, curled up in the corner and shaking, trying his best to be as small as can be in a big, big world. Francine glanced around as his soft whimpers filled the tiny building, seeing old, dusty cooking spoons and toys and hand-drawn pictures that a proud mother kept even once her darling child grew up.

Sammy, Susie, and Norman didn’t know what to feel as they arrived just to see Francine on her knees by Joey’s side, holding him as he cried once again, light streaming from the open door as he hid in the shadows. The ink was not washed off his clothes, and there was a scar on his left palm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not the end.


	16. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here we go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, I got some art of the last chapter!!!
> 
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/184691987823/insane-control-room-letting-go-by-holding-on  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/184695247343/insane-control-room-thank-you-for-blessing-the
> 
> I also want to take a second to deeply, deeply thank all the artists who have made me art. It is...mesmerizing and thrilling and SO motivating. I will make sure to curate it, treasure it, and show it off for the rest of my life. You're amazing. Like...you've added so much joy to my life. I'm so glad this gives you joy back. I love you guys so much.
> 
> Second, I have things I need to address. This series is ending, but I think the AU is not. I have some ideas about what "post-Hymns" is like, and I want to explore that, I think, along with some other stuff in the series that's not canon. So keep an eye open for that sometime!
> 
> Additionally, art for Hymns will still be organized with the tags I've been using on Tumblr thus far, and links to new art will be added as I can whenever I make new posts here on AO3. If you're interested in keeping up with fanart I get, looking directly on Tumblr is the best bet.
> 
> This is the chapter that made me cry the most.
> 
> If you haven't yet, **I suggest you read Rose Tea before this chapter.** The song featured is Here for You by Good Co, and here's a link:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAGf7bXbd70

 What a wonderful day.

In the living room, the sun shines bright. Rays stream past baby blue curtains, and the nursing home’s resident kitten is curled up on the daybed. She flicks her tail almost in tune to the music as the song finishes. The half dozen people in the room sleepily applaud, claps like soft, dripping rain- polite and grateful, even if tired from it being the perfect time to fall asleep like the little cat already has.

The piano player flexes their fingers for one last song before they retire, its chords soft and slow, like looking at yourself for the first time through glass so ancient it’s turned yellow; another filter, another time, both long ago and very, very close. The musician parts their lips and glides five fingers over black and white keys as they bid adieu.

_I don’t know just what to do…_

_When all I do is run._

_It’s getting to be…so hard for me…_

_To carry on._

…He catches a glance as he walks by the open room’s entry, seeing the flowers in a jug upon the piano and the ones outside as people in wheelchairs sit and enjoy the fresh air. He hopes, with time, so may he.

Henry died surrounded by loved ones, leaving behind a darling husband named Marvin and a beautiful daughter named Linda. That’s what the old obituary says.

He has been dead for quite some time.

A man with red hair eventually has soft shadow fall upon his face- still a shade darker than the rest, but so much brighter than the darkness that used to shroud him. He looks better in it.

He looks different.

The music- the twirling sound of notes like you can hear a couple’s slow ballroom dance- fades to the back of his ears as honey eyes blink softly and rosy cheeks turn away, dust motes like glitter in their slow descent to the earth-toned carpet as they continue to glide where he was watching.

And back and forth, one step at a time, the man feels light in the shape of windows fall over him with walls' shadows in between as he lingers down the hall with a rose in his hand.

_I go out most every night…_

_But I only reach the door._

…This one. His orange hairline shines at a different angle as he tilts his forehead up to look. His lips pull back and he bites the inside of his mouth.

_I kid myself…to think…_

_I could do more._

But someone promised him he can do more, and so he grips the doorway and peeks in, slow and wide-eyed.

The piano in the background picks up flight like a butterfly stuck atop an indoor vase, stringing in and out of wine glasses, table lamps, and couch pillows as it either tries to find the window or delays the end on purpose.

There’s a silhouette inside, someone in a rocking chair looking outside at the birdfeeder outside their window. The fact that he sees her again is suddenly so, so real, and the fog lifts with a dose of reality like a shock to the heart; a hand comes to his face and he releases a soft gasp-

He thinks to leave after all, but she’s already turned her head to see who has come to visit.

An Asian woman with hair woven from clouds adjusts to give a glance. She’s under a quilt knit yellow, pink, blue, green; and a face far more wrinkled with laughter and age than his becomes even more clear as she gives him a smile.

The heart in the man stops beating, and so Linda uses the time to look him up and down, evaluative. Who knows if she knows, too- how much smaller he seems than the last time they met, how a sweater and black pants instead of a white suit rounds out his shoulders- how tennis shoes instead of heels and a bare head instead of a top hat is so tiny…so much more meek and less grand than the character he was before.

She looks at him, and she decides.

“…You seem familiar.”

_In the mirror, I can see myself…_

_But it’s someone I don’t know._

…A lifetime flickers over his eyes, all the times he played over and over and over in his head; he’s used them to pity himself. It’s different seeing what you thought was gone for good.

And so anxiously, he huffs barely a chuckle, a nervous drop of his eyes all over the room not searching for what to say, but rather searching for the soul that’s left his body.

Inevitably, they fall back upon her. His beloved granddaughter.

She is here. She is alive.

_And every time…I close my eyes…_

_Back to yours._

And suddenly his smile firmed, just a little, just enough.

“Yes, dear,” finally arrives a proper greeting, “My name is-…Joey.” One more shift in his eyes, like flames of a candle in this soft shade of a room with no light but from outside.

His smile turns up more for a second with a slight exhale, hiding a grimace with a grin of amazement as true as the hurt he feels to say this.

“I knew you when you were just a baby.”

And what can she say to that?

Nothing. It’s so ridiculous. She’s so old, and he’s so young! And so Joey sees her wrinkles go even deeper as she belts a laugh.

It’s such a strong, healthy laugh.

_Since you’ve gone I’ve been so low…_

_Don’t know what else I can do._

…In a trance, Mr. Drew allows himself closer, and its almost like some of his black magic charm is back.

“Well, not right from birth,” he corrects, “But I _did_ know your father.” As if he’s admitting he never knew her at all.

The old woman continues to rock, the chair squeaking softly back and forth with baby birds in their nest singing harmony. Amused, as the truly strange stranger knowing her father doesn’t make much sense either with as young as he looks- 40? 50? Can’t be a day over 50-…she plays along.

“Which one?”

Oh, that voice is _lovely._ The man’s brow curls and he fiddles with his hands, melting on the spot at how that sound washes over and through him. Another short chuckle that can barely hide tears wanting to come, and his head dips down before he has he strength to lift it back up. Behind clean glasses are eyes nearly pinched shut with emotion, and underneath are lips he can feel quiver, but he still manages just fine.

 _“Both,”_ he answers with a nod, “But I knew one before the other.” A pause, as Joey absorbs her perfect face, her beautiful expressions. “I suppose you…always felt like Henry _was_ your father, didn’t you?”

Some cotton white hairs brush over her eyes as Linda tilts her head. “I never doubted it for a second, and never understood anyone who did. Blood doesn’t make family.” And somehow after already facing him, she seems to face him even more directly. _“Don’t you agree?”_

The woman with a full life can’t know how much that question means to him.

“…Yes,” he whispers, leaning in closer to his north star. The glassiness over his eyes glimmers as he does. “I do.”

Not every day Linda has someone that understands. It makes her giggle, rough in the back of her throat. “More people need to get that into their thick skulls!”

“Yes,” he answers reverently, setting a knee next to her rocker to look at the robins and maple leaves too, “They do.”

And although she’s never known him- and how odd it is he seems to know her- she lets him stay. A young woman comes into the doorway, leaning in and watching. Francine’s clothes are new, too, and she gently holds a little boy with brown hair and skin as he sucks his thumb and watches the second reunion.

_I’ll spend…my day…_

…Joey Drew stares out the window, just as his ray of sunshine is. She’s in a yellow dress, and it takes everything in him to keep from crying until he looks back out at the trees that go on past his sight and the sun beaming on a man who believed no one would ever see it again. He twirls the rose he brought in his hand, gently smoothing over the shape of the thorns.

_Waiting here…_

…Francine hugs Gabby just a little bit tighter.

_For you._

…Back in the living room of the nursing home, the pianist plays one note, two notes, three. The sound lingers, and they hold their fingers there, feeling the vibration in their fingertips, and they press one last time before slowly pulling away.

Just as he was a child, blinked, and became an old man, so he had blinked and little Linda went from the smallest baby to the brightest old woman.

The song is done.

“Would you like me to get you some tea, dear?”

“…I’d like nothing more.”

 

* * *

A hand places itself on another, the sound of running water drumming now the piano is gone and the birdsong is replaced by crickets. As Francine looks up into the stars, Sammy tilts his head down, releasing a soft sigh as each trickle of the brook echoes right into his heart. He holds her hand back, twitching his eyes to her in recognition that it’s okay; with a new body and a world of new sensations, it’s so easy to become overwhelmed, and so a signal from one to the other is appropriate about where different boundaries lie.

She squeezes it back, glancing down at her thumb as she strokes his knuckles. He seems…happy. And she’s happy in return. There’s a lot ahead of them, and sometimes its suffocating, and so the fact that her best friend can manage to smile makes it easier for her to smile too.

Kicking her boots, she can still feel the cold breeze over water pass through her leggings and give her goosebumps.

He feels one more pulse in the grip on his hand before a gentle weight falls upon his side. He can guess her head is turned up, hair glistening with moonlight and the spots on her face matching the constellations she seeks. Francine is doing such, in fact- marveling at galaxies she was worried she’d never see again. The rich blues and purples come to her eyes and fill her up with something amazing that there’s not a word for yet.

Sammy, in turn, tries to control his tensing up; still so bizarre to be so close. Still such a brief time ago no one was with him at all. He listens to the melody of the night, still trying to accept he’s not just imagining it.

He wished for something for so long that he had forgotten what it was really like.

“…I wish you could see it.”

Francine’s eyes have not yet fallen off the sky, but now rather than the vast infinite, she was seeing the stars around his head.

It’s hard to describe, from someone blind to someone seeing, how strange it is to hear people lament for you when there’s nothing to regret at all. Perhaps this isn’t truer for anyone else in the world than it is for Sammy Lawrence. They feel so bad it’s happened to you when you just want to enjoy the day you were once afraid would never come. But she means no ill will, and he cannot feel tired of her after all she’s done to try to understand and to be there. So instead of correcting, with hints of both mischief and solemnness, he offers something she has forgotten:

“I don’t need to see to hear every song I've never heard, Francine.”

The grin on his face widens a touch before growing smaller, and it’s the first time she sees that the glint in his eyes isn’t just hope for the future but joy for what’s here now. So, so much.

There’s a pause for a good, long time before Sammy feels her shift, curling up next to his side and holding him close. She doesn’t care about the hesitation it takes for him to turn and hold her back, his grey eyes lifted up to the heavens finally there above. The fireflies still light up the twilight, lily pads float without rush nor care across the pond, and his glasses are tucked in the collar of his shirt. Everything stays.

Yes, Francine Vahl has that promise of his to keep, but she’ll never forget the second one she made. Just as he helped her in one world, she’ll be there in the next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, one more time. I look forward to whatever is next. <3

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve actually gotten so much art that the character limit won’t let me put in all the links at the end notes! WOW!!!! Thank you, everyone!!! You’re all amazing and ilysm!!!! <3  
> I will be adding links to fanart as I post chapters, but please check the following tags. I’ve categorized things by arc/drabble so that you don’t get spoilers.
> 
> The overall tag for Hymns fanart is here:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/hymns-art
> 
> The tag for Hymns of Struggle as the first work alone is here:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/hos-art
> 
> Wonders of Heresy:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/wonders-art
> 
> Parables of Empathy:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/parables-art
> 
> Flickers of Faith:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/flickers-art
> 
> Tides of Longing:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/tides-art
> 
> Cares of Communion:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/cares-art
> 
> Dances of Duality:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/dances-art
> 
> A Rock in the River (this work you just read!):  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/a-rock-in-the-river-art
> 
> What’s Not Yours:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/wny-art
> 
> General/Crossover Art:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/general-art
> 
> Any art involving Gingie (the Joey of this AU):  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/gingie-art
> 
> And a commission of Gingie painted by my good friend Ace hehe:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/177183125008/aceofintuition-is-there-anything-quite-so
> 
> And here’s a playlist I’ve made:  
> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY8pGhalYoCuHX0dLpmuY3jNYntmUjltg
> 
>  **Read this if you plan on being so kind as to make me art yourself!!!!** (Some of it applies to content not canon to Hymns but still applies here):  
>  https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/176339938068/so-with-aces-permission-im-going-to-sort-of-add
> 
> Thank you everyone for your support!!!!!! I couldn’t do it without you!!! <3 <3 <3 Special thanks to the artists that have given me so, so much more than I could ever ask for:  
> Ace, Star, Silver, Gia, Metallic, Lil Griffin, Ufopilots, June, Halfie, Fern, Moonshadow0, Mango, CrowSketches, A-Rae-Of-Sunshine, Queen


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